It's implicit in asking whether she wasted her life on bullshit. It's clear that if she helped people who were dying, that's not bullshit. Given that whether her beliefs were true or not has little to do with what she did, asking whether "she wasted her life on bullshit" is a meaningless statement.



Many have done good for <i>lots</i> of reasons; why single out religion as a motivating force? You've already said that people have done evil because of it, so why not (incredibly generously) call it at best a wash, that religion motivates some to do good and others to do evil because people will find rationalizations for whatever they do (good or evil) in whatever they happen to be devoting their life to.

It's clear to you and me that Mother Teresa's work wasn't bullshit. I'm not sure it's clear to Berserk Sushi, who seems a bit...well, berserk. You're right, it doesn't matter whether her beliefs were true or not. what matters is that she believed them and she acted on her beliefs. Are her actions any less noble if her beliefs are bullshit? I don't think so. Is her religion any less bullshit because her actions were noble? I don't think so, but then, I'm not asking for my opinion. I'm trying to make the point that 'bullshit' isn't necessarily 'worthless.'




How can we single out any motivating force? I sometimes feel a compulsion to do good and help people. Is that because my parents made me go to church? I really couldn't say. With the possible exception of 'Thou shalt not kill,' nothing about my family's religion ever made any sense to me, but I was raised with Christian values, and how can I be sure that I would have been a charitable person otherwise? And if I can't be sure, how can Berserk Sushi be so sure?

If humans don't need it, why has every culture had it?

You're missing the point entirely.

The fact that she ascribes her deeds to her beliefs does not have anything to do with the value or worth of her beliefs.

For me to assert that religion is worthless, I don't need to prove that it was necessarily impossible that religion was, for her, a motivation. (Especially since my point, repeated from the beginning, was that any benefit gotten from religion could be gotten elsewhere without the 'believing in things that aren't true' or 'alienating/hating/murdering those who don't share your fantasies' luggage.) That has nothing to do with my central claim.

Your rebuttal was that religion was necessarily the only possible motivating factor for MT's work. Otherwise it's not addressing my point. And for you to prove that assertion, well, you have to prove it - the burden of proof isn't on my to validate a universal negative that was never part of my reasoning.

All the ones that require us to accept any bullshit in order to derive any value from them :)

Both Murphy and I already pointed out the fallacy of equating her work with religion. Her work was not religion. It was caring for some poor and some sick, under the pretense of religion.

To repeat - we're not discussing her actions, as her actions are not necessarily the product of her religious beliefs, as you've already agreed.

"If humans don't need to rape babies to death, murder each other in astonishingly creatively grotesque ways, glorify bloodthristy imaginary beings, steal from the dying and blind, abuse those who cannot defend themselves, and praise the viciously violent - then why has every culture done it?"

Oh, and what about that question that you quoted but didn't answer: "If it were a human need, why are there so many humans who don't need it?"

I didn't say "popular and addictive placebo," I didn't say "happy pill that was ascribed cultural significance long ago and has since then accumulated such cultural inertia that generations upon generations of popular individuals have elevated its status in human experience" - I said "human need," and I was responding to someone who called it a such a need.

I guess I'm wondering why you're picking on religion as opposed to any of the other institutions we don't need. I happen to think marriage is bullshit. You can't do anything with marriage that you couldn't do without it. Nobody needs it, and it's been used to oppress millions of people throughout history, yet people are fighting for the right to have it. what's up with that?

Everyone's beliefs are just that: beliefs. Belief isn't the same as knowledge. If your beliefs are founded on the pretext of a supreme power, then we call your beliefs 'religious;' if not, then not, but they're still beliefs. Surely you have some sense of right and wrong, good and evil. Where do your beliefs come from, and what makes yours any less bullshit than anyone else's?

It's interesting, because I think the questions you raise are fundamentally about human nature. Apparently it is human nature to seek answers to the question of why we're here, and that's the function of religion, and the reason ancient cultures developed belief systems. Apparently it is also human nature for some asshole to come along and exploit those belief systems for his--or her, but usually his--own purposes.

It's interesting, too, that all the major religions, many developed independently of each other, have basically the same tenets, which are probably not so different from your own, which kind of proves/supports your point that organized religion is unnecessary.

So was Anne Frank right or wrong? Are people mostly good, or not? And isn't your definition of 'good,' whatever it may be, a function of your spirituality?

The most obvious reason is simply because this thread is about religion specifically. If I wanted to tackle everything all at once I'd have a thread called "bullshit is bullshit," but I FEAR that'd make the topic of conversation a bit more opaque.

That said, out of all the bullshit institutions we have, religion is one of the most pernicious, resilient, widespread, and therefore dangerous fonts of bullshit in most (if not all) human cultures.

That's factually completely incorrect. In every nation that has it, there are specific legal benefits to married couples that are not otherwise available.

No. Not all beliefs are equally valid, and not all beliefs are equally dangerous. I'm also a little wary that you're using the word "belief" so vaguely and constantly now.

They're accountable to real things in the real world, and open to discussion on the basis of reality.

Which questions have I raised? "Religion is worthless" seems pretty declarative to me.

First, a very important point: Religion does not, cannot, and never has advanced knowledge. The closest it's come is undeservedly sharing the spotlight when someone who happens to share religious beliefs makes an important discovery through empirical reasoning and scientific method.

If religion were only here to answer irrelevant philosophical subjective questions like "Why are we here?" then we wouldn't have pastors fighting to convince the government that the Earth is 6,000 years old, now would we?

This is why I said earlier that any value religion offers comes saddled with unnecessary bullshit - and I don't mean that in the flippant "I don't prefer that kind of perspective" sense, I mean in that "ignorant untruths about the world" sense (and I'm being generous).

Any questions religion can answer are those which are purely subjective. Those can be answered without religion. The problem, again, is accountability - religion has a lovely habit of waiving that.

Not even close. They have the "same tenets" in hindsight, taken from a very specific culture-centric perspective, and ignoring whatever huge portions of the religion is convenient for you to ignore in order to see only the "same tenets."

A fundamental tenet of Judaism is literacy, and from it, literary interpretation and discussion of its texts (one of them is just a series of rabbis offering different interpretations of the same passages, each offering their own textual evidence for why they interpret it a certain way). This is not shared by, say, Islam (whose messianic prophet was illiterate) or most all branches of Christianity (especially that really popular once that explicitly states there is a single dogmatic infallible human leader).

Similarly, these three religions have submission to the will of god as an absolutely fundamental tenet, one which I cannot find anywhere in Zen Buddhism, nor in Shintoism. And these are just the easy, obvious examples.

Out of curiosity, what are my "tenets," since you know me so well? :)

what spirituality?

I'm not so dumb as to pretend to know enough about humanity so as to broadly categorize them in such binary terms.

You still didn't answer me. If it were such a human need, why are there so many people who don't need it?

To quote Dylan Moran, religion is a organised panic attack about death. It's funny to mention people that have done nice things in the name of their religion when a huge number of major wars have all been about exactly that.

As for the statement that religions have curiously developed along similar veins even though they have separate roots, well, they don't. Judaism, Islam and Christianity are all basically branches of the same tree and these religions have conveniently based their holidays and more around the religions that came before them. Some of the examples that come to mind are Christmas being conveniently plonked right on top of a pagan holiday and Christianity's holy trinity being a just a hop away from Hinduism's Trimurti, but there's likely far more than I'm unaware of.

I don't have a problem with religion as such, more a problem with organised religion. The idea that an individual has a belief system to deal with their unknowns is fine by me, but the fact an organisation then gets involved annoys me.

These are just my thoughts in general on the matter, and this is probably my first contribution to SD in years. I don't really do serious any more, it hurts my head.

Here's the thing: Your declarative sentence doesn't leave any room for argument, mostly because it's true. I just read a thread in the General Debate forum bemoaning the fact that everyone agrees and there's nothing to argue about. If everyone agrees, then this thread is pointless, innit? You're preaching to the choir, if you'll pardon the expression.

I paid for the five minute argument, and that was never five minutes just now.

You haven't convinced me that you can put any kind of value (or not) on a person's religion without judging the deeds he or she ascribes to that religion. Do you concern yourself only with people's religious fantasies, or do you judge their sexual fantasies as well? what difference does it make what someone believes if it doesn't have any bearing on their behavior?

My point about the major religions is that at their heart they pretty much all preach peace and love and enlightenment. Can we believe in those things, and act upon them, without religion? Sure. Likewise, we could have wars and greed and bloodshed without religion, too, so maybe religion is useless bullshit, but that doesn't make it all worthless. Not to the people who believe.

The problem with religion isn't that people put faith in some sort of god, it's that too many people put their faith in someone else's interpretation of god. That was no god telling you to hate homosexuals and burn heretics, that was some twisted little priest with his twisted little agenda. This is a problem with religion, but it is also indicative of a problem of education. Personally, I think if we fixed our education system, we could better combat the mindless obedience to authority that characterizes the worst religious thinkers.

I apologize if I presumed to know anything about your character. You said something earlier that suggested you recognize an atrocity when you see one, and that's good enough for me. The Bush/Cheney administration kind of lowered my standards of human decency.

And to answer your question, I don't have factual evidence that people need religion, but since people invented it, I'm inclined to think it must fill some need. Not for all individuals, obviously.

PS: In my opinion, the fact that marriage is a legal transaction makes it worse than religion. You don't have to go to court to get out of your church.

If you're going with this argument then religion has been the cause of millions of deaths and negative actions. The Muslim Conquests, the French Wars of Religion, the Crusades, the Reconquista and many many more horrible and violent actions, all in the name of religion. I'd personally say this means religion is worse than worthless, it's pretty destructive.

Also I'd argue there's a pretty thick line between belief and religion. Belief is individual and personal, only when it is shared and becomes a doctrine does it properly become religion, and it's only at that point that it becomes dangerous.

Having faith in a set of beliefs can happen without religion, and people certainly don't need religion to be nice people, or to have a belief that being nice is good, you just need a moral compass for that. But I think it's pretty hard to argue that structuring these beliefs into an organised religion has done more good than bad.

I mostly agree with you. It is organized religion that has done the most damage, and yet I wouldn't say that religion per se is dangerous. You don't see the Quakers out conquering anyone. You don't see the Amish invading anywhere. You don't see Taoists bombing abortion clinics.

And anyway, what can be done about religion? You can't forbid it. Outlawing it only drives it underground. There's no reasoning with zealots. So what's the solution?

The very act of formally establishing a religion from a set of beliefs leads the idea that they're the "right" way to think and everyone else is "wrong". If you look at the history of Quakers, they were persecuted in both Britain and America because their beliefs turned into a religion. Religion also creates another way to be segregated, which in turn can lead to conflict. And by turning beliefs into religion, you more often than not create rules that must be followed by its members and consequences for those that break the rules. If an Amish kid doesn't agree with their family's faith and wants to find their own path, is it likely that the family will be fine with that and let them explore their faith, or is it more likely that it will cause conflict and separate a family?

That's why Amish kids have Rumspringa, which is a period of time when they're set free to experience the world, after which they must choose between their religion and the rest of the world. There's a great documentary about this called The Devil's Playground, directed by Lucy Walker. A very high percentage of kids choose their religion, but I think that's because the rules are so rigid. After Rumspringa, if they choose to leave, they can't come back.

Being persecuted isn't the same as being aggressive, but I take your point about causing conflict and being segregated.

Some of the Eastern religions actually don't insist on being right, and don't consider their doctrine to be incompatible with other religions.

Don't most of us think there's a 'right' way to think?

That's the advantage of being correct, I guess...? I thought you disagreed that it was true?

Wait. Now I'm confused. Do you agree that religion is worthless or not?

Most people don't (I'd suggest that most people here who seem to agree don't have the balls to go that far, they just haven't been keeping to it like you have - which is unfortunate). Most people concede, vaguely or half-heartedly at least, that religion has SOME benefits or worth.

I'm making the unapologetic claim that it really doesn't.

:) See, this is why I'm happy you're sticking around. That is an excellent point.

It's not that it doesn't have any bearing on their behavior; it's that their behavior does not constitute the religion itself. Saying "religion is bullshit" is not the same as saying "all works done in the name of religion are bullshit." I wish I had time to be less vague here but I'm already late for work, so I'll pick this up later some more.

Again, no they don't. First off, the assumption that loaded words like "peace," "love," and "enlightenment" even mean the same things to each religion is already a ludicrous stretch.

Secondly, the Abrahamic religions (again, just to stick to easy examples) "preach" murder and hatred at least just as much as they do "peace" and "love." These are religions who have long, complex, and contradictory histories. To boil them down into only a handful of "tenets" so ambiguous that they're virtually meaningless is a grossly inaccurate simplification.

By this reasoning, nothing is worthless. So I have to ask what your definition of the word is.

There was no god telling anyone anything. what's your point? On the one hand, you praise some things that the religions preach, and on the other you condemn the rest - which are just as much some priest's agenda as any other part.

I agree that education is a large part of the answer to the epidemic of religion. I don't see how you can assert that while thinking that religion isn't something worthless. It's a little like saying that vaccines are the way to combat hepatitis, but there's nothing unhealthy about having hepatitis, not to the people who like it.

No worries, no offense taken :) Just trying to keep the argument to the points.

If it's not for everyone then it isn't a need. And people invented all those horrible things I mentioned as well; are you inclined to think those are also "needs"? If they are, are you inclined to think those are "needs" we should be embracing or rejecting?

You also don't have to go to court to get into your church in the first place either, so it's not exactly more oppressive. My point was that marriage is not simply an ideological affiliation, but has tangible benefits that don't exist outside it.

I'm really enjoying this thread. I have nothing to add right now, aside from the suggestion that Mani read <i>The Bible: The Biography</i> by Karen Armstrong. Have a look at <a href="http://newhumanist.org.uk/1592/the-bible-a-biography-by-karen-armstrong">a review here</a>. I think religion was, arguably, early philosophy.

Maybe the religion=worthlesss and philosophy=bullshit should be merged?

Work now.

Oh I'd totally agree with that, in a sense that it was a way of finding the meaning behind the unknowns of the time. It just so happens that this philosophy was too early to trust in the idea of rationality and logic, and instead relies on, well, magic.

By the way, is there a general consensus that belief and a personal belief system is a very different thing to religion? I've been basing my view on that, but I dunno if that was the intention of the debate.

I've seen Devil's Playground and read up on the practice (partly out of interest because I've been stuck behind buggies on the road when driving through some of the rural parts of Pennsylvania) and pretty much come to the conclusion that while it's nice that they have some manner of "you choose this lifestyle for yourself", it's not really that at all. They're conditioned from birth that joining the Church is the right thing to do and told that their family and everyone they've ever known will never speak to them again if they "choose" to leave the Church, so of course a lot of them go back. They've already been indoctrinated; a month or so of being able to drink with the rest of the residents of central Pennsylvania doesn't suddenly mean they're making their own choice.



Attempting to outlaw or forbid religion is, to me at least, abhorrent. I may think that it's all not true, but that kind of regulation is way, way over the line. And of course, zealots can't be reasoned with, so the only way forward is discussion and education. No, you're never going to convince the most hardcore religious, but from my standpoint, as long as the laws aren't being made by them, I'm ok with that for now.



It's a problem we've had for a while, but the point of this thread (and the recent return of posting) is in part to draw in new members. Apparently, it worked.



It just makes it a contract like any other, which is fine with me. It also means that in a sensible world, the government wouldn't throw up restrictions based on religious beliefs governing who could enter the contract. If we as a society have decided that there should be benefits to marriage (and we have), then the only way it works is to have it be a legal transaction.

Not going to lie - the review is putting me off the book hardcore, but that might be because it's so poorly-written, snide, and doesn't talk much about the book itself. (I would never be dumb enough to trust a current reverend to review the bible or any text discussing it.)

How early are we talking about, specifically? And in what ways?

This one sentence has done a whole lot more to sell me on the book than that grade-school-level review :)

One step at a time, love.

I don't think our ancestors were mystic-minded morons. Everywhere I turn I see evidence that they had just as much "trust in the idea of rationality and logic" as we do, in the sense that they knew what they were and how to use them.

Read the Upanishads. It's one of the earliest religious texts and it opens with an incredibly sophisticated discussion on the definition, meaning, and place of identity within the larger image of existence.

I think the idea that religion only arose because simple-minded ancestors just didn't know any better is largely inaccurate. (Besides, if that were all there were to it, certainly religion should have been shrinking from then on, as we learned more and more. Instead, we have Constantine.)

what I agree with: There's nothing people do in the name of religion that couldn't be done without it. I can think of lots of things people wouldn't do without religion--baptisms and whatnot--but for the life of me I can't think of anything people couldn't do without it.

what I disagree with: That this makes religion worthless, because, as we agree, it's not worthless to the person who believes. Worthless to society? Maybe, but you have to make up your mind, honey. When we talk about people's needs, are we talking about society, or are we talking about individuals? Because it seems to me you're trying to have it both ways, if you're saying religion is worthless not just to you but to society, but 'people' don't need it as evidenced by the fact that you're a person and you don't need it.

I just think 'worthless' is the wrong word. Superfluous? Unnecessary? Something that should be taxed as a luxury item?



Thank you, that's exactly what I was trying to say. I'm talking about religion in its original form, not the corrupt aberration we see now. My understanding is that it started as a way to explain the unknown, and by the way, when I say that, I'm not contending that it ever added anything to human knowledge.

When the Native Americans came up with a story about the world resting on the back of a turtle, for example, they didn't do it to justify warmongering, or tithing, or any of that. They did it because they needed a story explaining where things come from, and why we're here.

Now we have explanations for the sun and the stars and whatnot. But even if you could magically remove religion from the earth today, I think it would pop up again, because science may be able to explain how we got here, but it can't explain why. And I think that's the question religion seeks to answer, the human need that it fulfills. Some of us comfortable not knowing, but we're exceptional, aren't we, because an awful lot of people seem to feel that need.



My point is a lot of religions somehow went from being a story people agreed upon to being organizations with authority figures and rules and punishments for those who step out of line. It became a means of social control, and what we see today is a perversion that's been perpetuated for a long fucking time now. But I think it's a mistake to say, This is what religion is, because it's really just what certain religions have become.

Sorry if this isn't too coherent. I have to go, but I'm enjoying the argument, if that's what it is. I'm not usually the person who would stick up for religion, having no use for it myself, but it works out well, because if I really cared about it, I'd be all stressed out and calling you names.

Y'all have a very cool site here.

[/quote]

When did I agree to that?

Is there a contradiction here that I'm missing?

Something that's both superfluous and moronic seems to fit the mold for "worthless" pretty well, dudn't it?

what original form of which religion?

And this understanding is based on what? Joseph Campbell's writings? Other historians? Or just a speculative hunch based only on rough hindsight? :)

Now you're equating religion with mythology, which is also untrue.

what's the difference?

The question of "how" we got here and "why" we got here are only different if we invent an implicit purpose to all existence that wasn't ever there before. In other words, the "question" you claim science can't answer is one that was made up specifically to be unanswerable by scientific method.

I hate to be repetitive, but then it's not a fucking need, is it? I'm not letting you slide on that. Find a more accurate word, or at least stop suggesting things you have agreed are not true.

Really? I'd love to see you back that up. My hunch is that all you're going off of is the idea that so many people identify as belonging to a religion, and from there you make the wild leap to "therefore, if they identify with a religion they must feel a need to do so" and from there the even wilder leap to "they must feel a need to associate with a religion to answer a question they invented about the purpose of their existence which, although it can be answered without religion, they instead feel compelled to seek in religion."

None of those claims have been substantiated yet. You've got a pretty tall order there.

"Went from"? You seem to have this rosy picture in your head of religion starting out - everywhere on the globe at every time in this exact same manner - as a feel-good campfire story and nothing more, before big meanies used to to brainwash our simple-minded ancestors and bend their humble spirituality to wicked ends.

It's a common enough impression, but I've yet to see it documented as such in any historical record.

I actually smiled (you can't see it but I thought you should know). Welcome.

I'm just glad you guys haven't run of the only active debater IN MONTHS.

Fuck off Ryan, I got her debating :D

I was all "Sup what's going on"
And you guys were all "nothing. nothing at all. ever."
And then I was all "what? Seriously? COME ON GUYS"
And you were all "srsly"
So then I was all "Fuck it, I'll get your something going on"
And everyone was like "OK"
So I went all "ARGH LOOK AT ME I'M BEING UNAPOLOGETIC AND ABRASIVE"
And aside from Virgil being all "wurrrrrrrr" everyone else was kind of like "meh you're loud"
And then SOPHIE is all "SUP GUYS LET'S DO THIS"
And I'm like all ":D!"

And now you're gonna be all "I'm just glad you didn't scare her away"?

what's that all about? Fuck all y'all.

Sorry, I thought we were using my reasoning. 'Worthless' means without value, and I think if you're going to say something is worthless, you need to be clear: to whom is it worthless?

If you say it's worthless to society, then I have to give you one case in which religion has added value. I give you Mother Teresa, who could have done her good work without being Christian, but didn't, and furthermore she attributed all of the credit to the god of her religion. If every person in the world who calls themselves a 'Christian' were putting their beliefs into practice the way Mother Teresa did, you might still call it unnecessary, but I don't think you'd be calling it worthless.

I could be wrong about that. You seem pretty determined.



Yes, let's. You say Mother Teresa's acts are a separate thing from her religion, but if you separate 'religion' from its practical applications and its influence on behavior, then you're just talking about it in the abstract. If this is the case then I'd have to agree with you completely. Everything is worthless in the abstract. Isn't that why you hate philosophy? There are no practical uses for it. That's what makes it bullshit.



what is mythology but dead religion? All these gods used to be worshiped. They influenced human behavior.



All right, then, a human desire. And as far as we know, uniquely human. Does any other animal have questions, and try to come with answers? Does any other animal seek knowledge and truth?

I think the right-wing monkey-haters want to distance humanity from its primitive roots, and I think, in a way, you'd like to do the same, albeit for different reasons. I don't think you're ashamed of your monkey ancestors, but I think you're a bit disgusted with your primitive human ones, who lived in FEAR of the forces beyond their control and felt the need/desire to make up stories and rules to deal with it. You see religion as a lot of superstitious nonsense, and you think humanity should be further evolved by now.

And that, my friend, I cannot argue with.

I believe this is true, and it's one of the problems that I have with modern religious practices, the way it's forced on children. Obviously the indoctrination of children is easier in a closed society, but it happens everywhere. Have you also seen the movie Jesus Camp? It's exactly the type of indoctrination we accuse terrorists of perpetrating on their children. These kids are being prepped for war.

I think you're right that the way forward is through discussion and whatnot, but while we're at it, we might also discuss some improvements to our education system. They may not be teaching religion, but they're teaching capitalism with all the fervor of religion.

We tend to think of schools as innocuous places, and it's easy to overlook the type of conditioning that goes on there. Do you know how common corporate sponsorship is these days? Schools get money in exchange for allowing certain products and media into the school, not only for sale but often as part of the curriculum.

Aside from curriculum, the other problem with schools is that no matter what subject you take, no matter how many years you attend, the one thing they make damn sure you learn is obedience to authority. Creating generation after generation of people who are addicted to being told what to do and what to think hasn't helped us solve any of our problems.

Most religion is bullshit. Though I don't feel it, I can appreciate the human need for a higher power to give some significance to our existence.

So I thought I would chime in.

I believe in spirituality, not religion, so I'm going a tad off topic, but I find this relevant.

I have recently started working a 12 step program in Narcotics Anonymous, and something discussed is belief that a power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity. The program doesn't care what your higher power is and frankly it doesn't matter, you can pray to a rock if you wish. Some people use the fellowship itself, I personally pray to the universe for guidance.

I'm told by members that have substantial clean time that addicts who fail to be open minded about spiritual principles often relapse. Some people I know use a mainstream religion as a higher power and that keeps them clean, so I can see value in it. Do I agree with following a dogma of any faith, no. However I have no doubt that without faith in a power greater than myself I would go out and use, and many an addict who has relapsed has proven that.

The point is that relying on my own will to stay clean will fail me, or any addict who simply tries to "white knuckle it" as they call it. Many people have tried institutions, psychiatry, drug and alcohol counselers for it all to fail, it wasn't until they surrendered their will to a power greater than themselves were they able to recover.

So I wonder is spirituality the same as religion, and if you have a problem with spirituality. I suppose you could use science as your higher power if you wanted, and as you stated Mani, it is based in logic and reality.

However I also don't believe in taking peoples right to religion, as that right is given to us in the constitution, but that wasn't your argument, so is neither here nor there.