To think that religion creates more problems than it solves?

[toptramp]

(Dons hard hat)

I hate all the fighting that goes on in the name of religion. Most of it is about arguing about various interpretations of some old mythical book. Who cares what happens to us in the after life; lets sort out what happens in this life first. All the intolerance that goes on is just so exasperating.

I do think that some philosophies such as bhuddism and suffism are beautiful and I am not oblivious to the more mystical qualities of life but how can any of us possibly know what is out there?

Also when reading about scientology and cults I just think that all the mind control stuff is just wierd. Apparently Katie Holmes is now being stalked by cult members. As a young women my boyfriend was into a cult and I almost got sucked in too. It makes me shudder.

Part of me feels that religion is the buffer against the harsh realities of natural selection and survival of the fittest but then part of me feels that there is a bigger picture and that we need some kind of moral compass to prevent the worst excesses of natural selection.. If only we'd just all stop having wars about it.

Wow deep.

1/10

People would still find reasons to have wars. Land grabs, he looked at him the wrong way, etc.

Blaming religion is stupid. Blame people.

My first

I'll also say I dislike religion, a lot.

People whom believe in any type religion are fantasists.

Sometimes I feel like religion causes more problems than they solve. Eg, different religious sects Killing each other as well as religious denominations at war.

And that is coming from someone who was brought up a strict catholic!

What SecretNutellaFix said. Religion is just a medium for people to be arseholes. If not religion, it would be something else. In the meantime, religion does do a lot of good for a lot of people too.

I have a lot of very good, very kind, religious friends - religion brings them a great deal of comfort

I don't dislike religion - I dislike idiots who hijack it to their own ends

Organised religion is the main problem, but in general it's all because no one can really agree on what to believe, even in the same religion, and they are all so stubborn that they won't move an inch on their interpretation of their version of a book that some dude wrote thousands of years ago before humans really understood the world in any reasonable way. This causes conflict. Perhaps people would fight even without these religions but the wars are always usually because of a disagreement. Disagreements come from differences in opinion. Differences in opinion relate to beliefs. You could argue that this would still be some form of religion regardless of whether it's organised or not.

Forgive me for being sceptical, but I think I'll stick with verifiable facts resulting from experimentation which follows the scientific method thank you very much!

Religions are a mix of good and bad. If there was nothing good about them, its unlikely they'd have evolved and propagated in human societies.

I certainly think religions create a lot more philosophical problems than they solve.

I am a humanist - as such I respect other people right to their faith regardless of my own beliefs

Yawn.

grimma I'm not disagreeing with you but I feel that the problem that most religions have in today's society is figure heads refusing to evolve and keeping Archaic beliefs. I feel this is where the majority of the bad rep comes from.

If people didn't use religion as an excuse for wars, they'd use something else, and anyway most wars are about territory or resources, rather than religion.

Ditto intolerance - it gives an excuse, but plenty of people are intolerant about colour or sexuality without any "religious" reasons.

Essentially, the problem is people, not religion.

what is the betting that toptramp doesn't come back to this thread?

odds on fav?

I agree with the poster who said that organised religion is the problem - I think faith should be between a person and the deity of their choice (I believe this is how the Quakers work?)

And yes, the thing that gets in the way is human nature. We do things in groups that we would never contemplate doing alone. Joining an established church or joining a gang - it really isn't that different, because in both scenarios we subsume our own ethics and conscience to that of the group.

When people stop thinking for themselves and trying to answer the hard questions life throws at them, that's when you get trouble. When people listen to a minister/the Pope/gang boss/politician/Scout leader (the list could go on) and accepts what they say without thought or question then that person has given up part of their own free will.

Some people call that 'taking a leap of faith'. I call it 'abrogating responsibility'.
I'm an atheist, in case you hadn't guessed, but I don't belong to any atheist groups as that would make me one of the herd. I don't do herds. The upshot of my choice is that I have a host of lovely friends from all religions and none, and we can all sit down together and have profound debates sometimes involving alcohol about life, faith, humanity and everything. That's how it ought to be.

I have some lovely religious friends. I also have a lot of lovely athiest friend. It is the hijacking thing. uggggrrrr. It does annoy me when a deeply religious person turns out to be an arsehole than when an athiest turns out to be an arsehole. It just seems more hypocritical. Not that athiesm promotes being an arse in any way, shape or form!

I can never take a leap of faith as for me faith is not enough. I need proof.

Why does it annoy you more when a religious person turns out to be an arsehole, OP? Genuinely wondering about that - are you subconsciously holding them to a higher moral standard, or do you feel that they 'claim the moral high ground'?

My DC go to a C of E school and due to this they've brought a lot of religious ideas/stuff home. Its made me think about religion a lot.....

then suddenly I had an idea, all this 'Father' figure watching over us, these guidlines how to live, and the idea that religion means you are not alone, but part of a bigger plan......it suddenly seemed to me that Religion seems to be all about a refusal to grow up?!! Wanting to be 'cared for' like when you are a child.

Well normally when you grow up, you leave your parents behind and they no longer look after you. And you control your world. So you have to get used to doiing stuff all on your own. It can be hard and a big life step.
It seems to me Religion is sooo much about keeping that secure feeling (most) of us get as a child. That we still have a parent watching over us. And we must obey that parent and stick to their rules.

Just my humble opinion. I'm not C of E at all. It just happened our nearest school was.

There's definitely a moral high ground issue. Religious individuals (and I'm talking people who really believe here) tend to be very inflexible in their thinking. There's no way to change their opinion on a topic regardless of the strength of your argument. This is a religious trait in general, the mono-theistic religions still try to cling on to ideals which were convenient to the male dominant cultures of sub-Saharan Africa 2000-3000 years ago; Sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. They can't seem to move on, most will tell you they have, but when really pushed, these qualities still lie engrained in their beliefs.

Pedro actually I find people who are secure in their faith are usually the more flexible ones, and those who are less secure tend to be the ones with their fingers in their ears refusing to listen to other points of view because they find it threatening and are unable to have a reasonable discussion.

The difficulty for organised religion is that there is a huge amount of inertia in any large organisation, and it takes a lot of pushing to get a mass of people to move in any coherent direction, whereas an individual is more capable of looking at what they believe and reconsidering aspects which don't measure up to their other experiences of life.

So, in official church teaching, issues like sexism and homophobia are often lagging a long way behind what society currently thinks of them. Individual Christians are usually struggling to square church teaching with their actual views, and pressuring the church to move forwards. But since church decision-makers tend to the old and stodgy end of church membership, there is often a feeling that they shouldn't be swayed by "popular opinion" and that there's no need to rush to get rid of hundreds of years of prejudice just because society has now changed.

It's irritating to many of those inside churches as well, but the choice is to either stay inside and poke them with sticks, or else to leave them to it and let the church become a bastion of prejudice, which would mean an end to the good that churches can do as well as the bad bits.