Observations during my lifetime so far...

I'm not religious in any sense of the word. I don't believe that there is any "being" out there playing god. I've been a watcher and observer of so many things in my life, religion and religious people being one of them.

My mother was a "church hopper". She would drag me and my sister to different churches every year, so I have been able to observe different religions at work and in play.

Here are just a few of my observations (many of which I've seen first hand):

-No matter what name they go by, what "god" they worship, or what "philosophies" they claim to follow, religions are all the same.

-After supposed thousands of years of religion on this planet, there still is not ONE single, solid, hard, concrete piece of evidence that any of it is real, or that any of their "gods" exist.

-Religion is to blame for at least 90% of the hate, animosity, racism, prejudice, famine, war, crime, and child abuse on this planet.

-Religion has proven itself to be more of organized crime, than organized love and charity as they claim they are.

-The same types of people that worship some god, all consider themselves to be above other, and are one type of person: liars, cheats, frauds, gossips, back stabbers, and supreme hypocrites.

-Religious people would rather see you dead, than have anything to do with you, if you don't believe as they believe, think as they do, or worship the same "gods" as they do.

-Religious people have more violent tendencies that non-religious people.

-Religious people use religion as a device to belittle others, hold themselves above others, as an excuse for criminal acts, as a front for illegal and criminal acts, and as a "get rich" scheme, as a power play over others.

-Religious peoples will do what it takes to convert you, or get rid of you. If they can't convert you, they harass, torment, and lie about you. If this doesn't work, they try to incite others to believe their lies about you, and to do their "dirty work" for them and get rid of you.

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Theories I've come to over the years:

-Religion has nothing to do with actual religion. It's a control device. It's a power trip. It's a slavemaker. It's a con-game of the highest magnitude.

-Religion is akin to one of the most notorious organizations in modern history, the Third Reich.

-Religion is the true evil on this planet. Without it, this planet would not have most of the problems it has.

-Religion resulted from early "civilized" peoples being policed by their Pharaohs and Emperors, as parents police their children.......with stories about monsters under the bed, boogeymen that will get you if you're bad, and invisible entities that will "get you" if you misbehave. Religion is nothing more than a police technique to keep people in order. After all, the Emperors and Pharaohs didn't have police forces to keep their people in check.....what better way than to keep order, than making people believe they are going to "hell" if they misbehave, or that some kind of evil spirit will come get them if they don't do as you say.

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This does not describe all religious people, as some do believe in the base facts of what religion is supposed to be - practicing honesty, tolerance, love, kindness, respect, and good deeds. But these people are very rare......at least from my experiences so far.

 

I've always taken the approach to religion that it is man made as a method to use the fear of god to help keep people 'in line' and also to provide income for people who want to scam people. I have yet to meet a self proclaimed Christian that I admire. If people simply lived by the Christian's 'Golden Rules' they would be much more Christianly that most Christians.

 

I'm no fan of religions as a concept (or any particular ones), but I don't think it is this cut and dry.

Religion is malleable. Arguably because it doesn't have any proper anchoring in anything objectively true (but that's maybe neither here nor there), I don't think the actions and influences of religion are created in a vacuum. To a large extent, I think most of the problems of the world would be there regardless, but religion is malleable, so it has been easy for people to drag in religion. I don't think the issues surrounding Israel or Pakistan or WBC are fundamentally religious issues, the people involved have made it about religion after the fact.

 

if you have blood pumping through your veins and you're not in a coma you are a religious.

Well that just covered every possible thought, so I guess you agree with me that if you got blood pumping through your veins and you're not in a coma you have a religion of one sort or another.

You can't be serious about this one can you? While you may not be able to prove a deity exists or does not exist you can certainly prove religion exists, and you can additionally prove that everyone has a religion of one flavor or another.

Since your religion is founded in your belief structure of course it's going to be different from the person standing beside you and since everyone has a religion I'd say it's closer to 100% responsible for everything that's done both good and bad.

you might get away with that if you said and stipulated a specific organized religion but you didn't you said religion all by itself with no qualifiers therefore that is incorrect also.

I've seen nothing as grandiose as atheists who claim to have no religion and believe in no God if you want to talk about all those lovely qualities they have them all!

Dead? Well that's a new one on me. Well stalin maybe.

well the problem you have here is that everybody's religious and you've drawn no substantial distinction between deity based religion and atheist based religion. The lovely religion of convenience of atheists by far exceed the immoralities and atrocities of the deity-based religions.

Atheists use logic and reason or better said what they 'think' is logic and reason to belittle anyone that believes in a deity or anything supernatural. More pot calling kettle black.

You're doing a pretty good job yourself for someone I presume is claiming to be nonreligious! LOL

Again you must be talking about organized religion like governments and groups certainly not individuals since an individual has little control enmass

Yeah well the Zionist J-Ws declared a holy war against Germany have you forgotten that or is it something you never bothered to learn?

Nah evil people are the true evil on this planet regardless of their religion.

False religion is inherent in human nature.
Atheists behave because their god, the guv, will come get you and punish you for life.

sorry there's no instruction manual telling anyone what their religion is supposed to be

 

I have to admit that some near death experiencers seem to have been shown that the various religions are surprisingly similar.... you do have a point there......


https://www.near-death.com/experiences/exceptional/mellen-thomas-benedict.html#a09

Could it be that our Creator is using religion as something of a test for us... much as Stanley Milgram Ph. D. tested the "teacher subject" to see if they would obey the authority figure and hit the button to deliver what they thought we real shocks to the "learner subject" who, like the authority figure... was actually an actor.... playing the role of somebody who was receiving a shock when the "teacher subject" hit the button to give them a shock?!


www.CarbonBias.blogspot.ca/

Near death experiencers though do seem to be glimpsing higher invisible dimensions of space and time exactly as is postulated in String Theory.



I met my little sister in heaven - The near death experience of Colton Burpo

 

Moses was a master criminal extortionist. He wrote the book on how to be a criminal.

 

So religion isn't your cup of tea. Stereotyping is apparently is more soothing to your palate.

 

Conjectures are not observations. Are you trying to convince 'us' or yourself with these arguments?

 

If they all do the same things........then thats on them, not me. They are stereotyping themselves.

 

I never said these were arguments, you did.
I didn't conject, I observed. Conjecture is second hand information with no proof or basis.
I observed all of this first hand, right in front of my face. Every time.
I don't have to convince myself of anything, when I witnessed the truth happening right in front of me.

 

"-Religion is to blame for at least 90% of the hate, animosity, racism, prejudice, famine, war, crime, and child abuse on this planet." Conjecture. No statistics support this.
"-Religion has proven itself to be more of organized crime, than organized love and charity as they claim they are." Conjecture. Which religion, anyway.
"-Religious people have more violent tendencies that 'sic) non-religious people." Conjecture. You do not know all the people.
This is just part of what is conjecture in what you present. I have no intention of defending "religion" (even if it had been defined here). Most of what I see in "religion" obscures any genuine message. Nevertheless, stating conjecture as fact is no way to refute anything.

 

I would surmise that if anyone is cojecturing here, it is you.

 

wow, so is murder right or wrong?

 

Actually, I would argue that you ARE religious, as I would argue that man is inherently a religious animal.

Do you believe in the Big Bang Theory? How about Abiogenesis? How about AGW theory? How about Old Earth Theory? Young Earth Theory? Theory of the Continuum? Those are all religious beliefs...

However, I am taking your statement to mean that you don't adhere to Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Shinto, Judaism, Catholicism, or any other commonly referred to "religions" of that sort (which involve a god or spirits or going to church and what not).

Okay, so this statement means that you are either an Atheist (without theism) or a Church of No God member (one of the many branches of theism).

This is where many people who claim to be "Atheists" are actually people in denial about their Church of No God membership because they don't understand what religion actually is and they have a weak foundation in logic knowledge...

Essentially, yes. All religions make use of the exact same basic logical framework.

You see, a religion is merely a circular argument with other arguments stemming from it (which is how the word "religion" is best defined imo). Circular arguments, contrary to what you may have learned in some college level logic course, are NOT fallacious in and of themselves, as the conclusion follows from the predicate all the same. Rather, it is the attempt to use a circular argument in a proof that is fallacious, and what is known as the Circular Argument Fallacy.

For a couple examples of how one can define specific religions, Christianity is best defined as "the belief that Jesus Christ exists and is who he says he is" because that is the circular argument that serves as the foundational basis of Christianity. For the Church of Global Warming, that foundational basis would instead be "the belief that the Earth is warming".

Here, you are conflating the words "evidence" and "proof". They are NOT the same thing. A proof is an extension of a foundational axiom (proofs only exist in closed functional systems such as mathematics and logic) and evidence is "any statement that supports an argument" (essentially, evidence is a predicate).

Evidence for Christianity, for example, exists. The Bible is evidence for it. Life itself is evidence for it. The fine-tuning of the universe is evidence for it. The existence of billions of self-identifying Christians throughout the world is evidence for it. Of course, none of that PROVES Christianity to be true; it is merely evidence for it.

Religion in and of itself is NOT to blame for "90% of" those things... Religious FUNDAMENTALISM would be to blame. By fundamentalism, I mean vehemently attempting to use a circular argument in a proof (iow, prove one's religious beliefs).

No one is perfect.

Again, no one is perfect.

Bigotry on your part. SOME self-proclaimed believers in particular faiths are not all "religious people". As I said beforehand, I would actually argue that ALL people are "religious people" in one way or another...

BTW, what you are describing here are not "all religious people", but just the fundamentalists of particular religious beliefs. THEY are the ones who become hyper emotional about others not sharing their religious beliefs (which can lead to theft, assault, murder, etc...)

Continued bigotry. All people are "religious people" in one way or another. Again the problem isn't religion in and of itself, but the fundamentalists within each religion. It is such fundamentalism that leads to violence.

Continued bigotry. Some religious people are not all religious people. See above notes regarding "fundamentalism"...

Again, see my above notes about "fundamentalism"... What you seem to be against are not the religions in and of themselves, but rather the fundamentalists within each religion.

 

This sounds like talking points straight from an atheist website. Yawn....

 

I believe that everyone is born with the capacity to do good or evil, and with a conscience to know the difference, along with tributaries of inspiration from above and below, as well as from the world around us. Therefore, good and evil are inherent in life. And religions come after the fact. So I don't lament religion. I lament my own poor conduct and choices in life. Like anything else, religions can originate or be had for good or evil. Then there is, by time, within many, the want to rest our heads and spirits and vest in certainty our exquisite and eternal welfare, if you will. The ultimate inspiration. We think it is us, but it calls from elsewhere. A thousand ships flying banners trawl our estimations. Which one is our salvation or regret. Choices. Always choices. Thank God for such a gift as choice, the adversary's bane.

 

A religion, in logic terminology, is simply an initial circular argument with other arguments stemming from it.

Hopefully you do one day.

To be a Christian is simply to believe that Jesus Christ exists and that he indeed is who he says he is. We all have fallen short of the "Golden Rule", some more often than others.

 

They don't all "do the same things"... You are continuing your bigotry...

 

Did you know that observations are subject to the problems of phenomenology?

 

The Being of Light of NDE fame may have came up with a branch of spirituality more to your liking.

https://www.near-death.com/experiences/gay/christian-andreason.html#a04h

But....... this longer term plan may not be entirely without risks?!


http://www.allaboutchristian.com/spirituality/

....

 

Have you ever seen any of the James Bond movies? Do you approve or disapprove of the character's actions?

 

James Bond is a work of fiction.

 

And you think that the Jesus character was real? He wasn't even called Jesus until 1632 A.D.

 

He was called Jesus well before then...