Is religion a from of evil in disguise?

My point is that people do not understand the book.
There is a simple "thou shalt not kill" as someone else has said... any of the other information is usually, in context, a story explaining something that happened, rather than specific instructions outside the context of the story.

So if different actions can occur on the basis of what is written, surely the actions can be flawed because they are interpreted incorrectly. In which case I would have to say the actions do not define the religion because the actions can be wholly wrong from what the religious texts are trying to teach.


Some Christians may say that making a parking lot out of Iraq is good, other Christians don't believe that is true. Which is the true path of Christianity? We have two different actions from religious followers... which action is truely defining that of christianity? It could be neither, could it not? It certainly cannot be both because someone (or all) have to be incorrect at least...

 

Sorry but you are mistaken. many years ago, I and my cousin watched my Uncle smash in the heads of some new born kittens he did not want on the farm. It made me sick, but, my cousin who was the same age, did not think anything of it. I was a city boy, he was a farm boy, two different societies, two different moral values.
I am quite sure that over the years some of the societies in which baby girls were unwanted did far worse things to their unwanted children that expose them on a hillside as the Spartans did. Society sets the morals and those moral values change from time to time, place to place and culture to culture.
While it was GOOD for Maori to eat their dead enemies, I am certain that no one in America today would be interested in eating Osama Bin Laden. Morals change, that is fact.

 

Good point. This raises the question, if there are absolute morals, what makes us think that we would know them? In general, knowledge and behaviour is gained by observing our environment. Unless absolute morals are observed, how are humans supposed to know what they are? And if they are observed, why don't people use those observations as arguments, instead of just pointing at certain actions and scream "appalling" until it becomes true?

 

Not really. He had probably just seen that type of behaviour before.
How can you say that it's different morals, rather than different conditioning?

We can have two people from the same town, background, school, etc... but one goes to the Army and is conditioned and desensitised against certain actions. Just because the guy in the army doesn't flintch, doesn't mean he thinks it's morally correct.

Behaviors are learned. I'm talking about something that is inside.whether or not is has been repressed.

 

There are no morals inside, you get morals by being conditioned to them by your society.

By the way, when I went in the army, I believed killing was wrong, I did not believe I would ever be able to kill anyone, even in combat. However, after 8 weeks of army conditioning my morals had been modified, I was ready to go out and shoot any enemy of America, in a blinking instant. Today, nearly 50 years later, I am still prepared to kill when I feel it is needed. The Army changed my moral values with a short intensive conditioning. Think how much conditioning you get at home for the 18 years before you meet the Military.

 

Religion? Yes - in most cases

... like when I religiously wash my hands after the use of a toilet - I am hell bent on killing .... germs

Now; is the concept of God founded on evil? YES! ... the free choice to be or not to be evil is all yours to pursue or reject.​

Even though God created it - it is still man's choice to use it or not.

 

I doubt it.

 

I don't really see how this is compatible with your belief that we should jail everyone under the age of 21.

 

Talk for yourself.

What I mean is that we usually don't get information without some form of input. I'm not saying we make the right conclusion all the time.

God should know the ultimate morals. God should also know natural laws, such as physics. Humanity had to figure out the laws of physics by themselves, who says God decided to throw us one bone when he didn't throw the other?

 

This is a great example.
So you now believe, after Army training, that killing is not immoral? In other words, you don't believe that killing someone is wrong, or bad in any manner whatsoever?

This would be different from still understanding it is "bad", but "needing" to kill someone if the circumstance depended on it. Very very different indeed.

If you are suggesting army training means that soldiers no longer understand that killing someone is bad, then there is the possibilty of danger to the public when they return home. An arguement could turn to murder because the soldier doesn't percieve the action of killing as bad...

 

Does some ultimate set of natural laws even exist?

 

Yes. I'm not sure they are what we know as the natural laws today, but they are at the very least simplifications of fundamental ones.

There are other civilizations with other morals, there are not other civilizations that disobey gravity or the like.

 

Religion receives quite good trashing on the damage, which it does, but is not bad really. Some - straight some - use it as apology for which they do, but in many cases, which are support for more political reasons. The Islamic countries wish us to pull out -, which they use their religion, in order masses to their side together - are however possibly the low reason oil and their desire to be more influential in the world community. People say that George Bush killing people in the name of the Christianity actual is real he killing people for to be in order, oil and it happens, a pious Christian. Another example people would like to use are Hitler - some said that it was catholic heath, some - really the main thing of the penetration of the other countries should more area receive - country were the motive - and then used it Jews and something other minorities for south supports. It was also crazy however this really a did have everything to do with religion. Much was done in the name of the religion, but it is more probable the land seizure, which took place with overcoating the religion, in order to refuel the masses. Up to the individual crimes takes place - mental disorder can be attributed much.

 

Why?

What fundamental ones?

Sure there are.

 

Because everything has to follow it. We've never seen anything that doesn't. And they might not be what we recognize as fundamental today, but we know that under our circumstances, certain things happen.

Well, that we don't know for sure. We can hazard guesses, and personally I believe we are getting kind of close, but I don't believe that strongly enough to base my argument on it.

Example?

 

Of course we have! They're called anomalies, and without them scientific progress wouldn't even exist.

Western civilization pre-Newton(and possibly in the future).

 

The army brainwashed me into the belief that killing the enemy was good, lets go kill the enemy. Time taught me that my earlier morals were invalid, because not all killing is bad. Killing a true enemy that is out to kill you and yours is GOOOD. After learning that morals were nonsense that had to be looked at with a questing mind. I modified my personal morals to include the Killing of criminals found guilty of capital offenses, killing of anyone out to harm me, killing of anyone out to harm my friends, neighbors and family. Killing is a valid option in many instances, NOT all. If someone raped and killed my daughter and for some reason the law let him off, I would find that my personal killing of him would be a moral, and wonderfully good thing.

My moral values no longer include "killing is bad".
My moral values not include "some killing may be bad".
Each option to kill has to be looked at separately. By MY morals.

Most people still idiotically claim to follow some stupid set of morals they were told 'came from god". Notice I said they CLAIM TO. In reality most people do what they want and do not let morals bother them at all, unless they happen to dislike some thing someone else is doing.

 

However, natural laws are not immutable, gravity is not the same and does not always follow the same rules. There seem to be exceptions for all the things we call natural laws. It is possible that there exist so many varied environments in the universe that the NATURAL laws change and mutate to fit those environments so that no complete set may ever be found.

 

Religion is not evil in disguise, it is evil in open fact. Anything that leads people to believe in nonsense, to deny fact, to believe in things for which there are no facts is EVIL.

 

Care to give an example? I agree we don't understand everything that goes on, but that doesn't make it true that other stuff is going on elsewhere.

Are you saying that people didn't feel the force of gravity before Newton? I've never said anything about what we know about gravity, you asked about whether they exist or not.

Besides, Newton didn't invent or discover it, it was known to the old Greeks, Newton just pointed out how it works.

 

What are these exceptions? If a law is subject to exceptions, then it wasn't a law in the first place. Maybe it was a simplification of a law, a law under certain circumstances, but it didn't describe how it really worked, so it was incomplete.

I never said anything about whether the laws may be "found", my argument is completely detached from humanity's understanding of the natural laws.

 

The null result of the Michelson-Morley experiment.

At the very least it makes it a possibility.

No, what they felt was, as an Aristotelian would have put it, the innate tendency of massive objects to seek lower ground.

 

God is the fantasy of idiots.

 

"religion" can be both.

It is

You musta went to the "Church of Sissy Lala"

All people do all things.

people crave "order"

ever goto highschool? why do people wanna belong to a group?

how do you know? Maybe you nailed it on the head here.

 

Ya, your so smart and they're so dumb