'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Sep 06, 2017 5:45 am

Where we have reasons for what we believe, we have no need of faith; where we have no reasons, we have lost both our connection to the world and to one another. Faith is what credulity becomes when it finally achieves escape velocity from the constraints of terrestrial discourse.

The idea, therefore, that religious faith is somehow a sacred human convention--distinguished, as it is, both by the extravagance of its claims and by the paucity of its evidence--is really too great a monstrosity to be appreciated in all its glory. Religious faith represents so uncompromising a misuse of the power of our minds that it forms a kind of perverse, cultural singularity - a vanishing point beyond which rational discourse proves impossible.

-- Sam Harris, The End of Faith, page 25
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by Scot Dutchy » Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:55 am

What is faith? It is useless term and has no merit. It creates a dependency on something you cant control. I never use it as there are more precise terms in English. In Dutch faith and belief are the same word weirdly enough.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by rainbow » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:03 am

Scot Dutchy wrote:What is faith? It is useless term and has no merit. It creates a dependency on something you cant control. I never use it as there are more precise terms in English. In Dutch faith and belief are the same word weirdly enough.
I have faith the sun will rise tomorrow.
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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by Brian Peacock » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:22 am

You don't need faith for that, just Newton. ;)
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Clinton Huxley » 21 Jun 2012 » 14:10:36 GMT
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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by devogue » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:23 am

Scot Dutchy wrote:What is faith? It is useless term and has no merit.
When I was indoctrinated into Catholicism, faith went hand in hand with "grace" as a central virtue of the religion. Faith is the bat that is swung at celestial teapots and the scientific chipping away of the religious structure.

However, faith is also crucial to the comfort derived from religion. From the outside it seems perverse, but faith is the mast that people lash themselves to when faced by storms of grief or perceived lack of purpose. It's a powerful thing.

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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by Scot Dutchy » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:30 am

But as I said having faith in something is not having control which is totally illogical.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by devogue » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:34 am

Scot Dutchy wrote:But as I said having faith in something is not having control which is totally illogical.
There's no control when you bungee jump either, and it's totally illogical, but it obviously feels good to a certain type of lunatic.

Same goes for faith :hehe:

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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by Scot Dutchy » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:39 am

:lol: I would have faith about as often as I would go bungee jumping.
"Wat is het een gezellig boel hier".

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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by Rum » Wed Sep 06, 2017 10:44 am

I was an active 'born again' (though the term wasn't used back then) in my mid to late teens. We were told by the evangelical brainwashers that trapped me a a few of my school friends that faith was a 'gift'' as was grace and other stuff.

As I gradually lost my belief in gods and Jesus I did occasionally wonder why, if I had been given the gift of faith, it was gradually being taken away from me.

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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by rainbow » Wed Sep 06, 2017 11:27 am

Rum wrote: As I gradually lost my belief in gods and Jesus I did occasionally wonder why, if I had been given the gift of faith, it was gradually being taken away from me.
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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by Hermit » Wed Sep 06, 2017 12:33 pm

devogue wrote:
Scot Dutchy wrote:What is faith? It is useless term and has no merit.
When I was indoctrinated into Catholicism, faith went hand in hand with "grace" as a central virtue of the religion. Faith is the bat that is swung at celestial teapots and the scientific chipping away of the religious structure.

However, faith is also crucial to the comfort derived from religion. From the outside it seems perverse, but faith is the mast that people lash themselves to when faced by storms of grief or perceived lack of purpose. It's a powerful thing.
:potd:

Excellent explanation for why billions of people need and find solace in something apparently so useless. Karl Marx put it less poetically and more succinctly: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people." He went on: "The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo."
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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by Rum » Wed Sep 06, 2017 3:06 pm

One should not overlook the fear involved in traditional religion of course. Often a fear used by a controlling state or for that matter just to moderate social behaviour and enforce norms.

My grandmother, for example, was a devout Christian. She had a child 'out of wedlock' as they used to say, way back in the early 40s after her first husband had died. Not only was she shunned by her close minded 'religious' community in which she had always been active but she was convinced for the rest of her days that she was bound for hell wen she died and lived into her 70s believing and dreading the event.

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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by Hermit » Wed Sep 06, 2017 8:53 pm

Rum wrote:One should not overlook the fear involved in traditional religion of course. Often a fear used by a controlling state or for that matter just to moderate social behaviour and enforce norms.

My grandmother, for example, was a devout Christian. She had a child 'out of wedlock' as they used to say, way back in the early 40s after her first husband had died. Not only was she shunned by her close minded 'religious' community in which she had always been active but she was convinced for the rest of her days that she was bound for hell wen she died and lived into her 70s believing and dreading the event.
Yes, fear of eternal damnation to hell in the afterlife has created hell on earth for millions of Christians at least. I am not familiar what other religions have to say about it. But it is not what makes faith so attractive. Faith, as Dev put it, provides comfort in the face of storms of grief or perceived lack of purpose. Fear is not the opium of the people.
I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops. - Stephen J. Gould

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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by mistermack » Sun Sep 10, 2017 4:59 pm

Faith not only comforts people in distress, it provides a motive for killing the unbelievers.

Modern day faith doesn't come much stronger than the one that convinces people to strap explosives round their bodies in order to murder a bunch of infidels, and get their hands on seventy willing virgins.

That's real faith. Western stuff is just wishful thinking, like buying a lottery ticket.
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Re: 'Overwhelmingly non-religious'

Post by cronus » Sun Sep 10, 2017 6:39 pm

Religion is a voodoo life support system for a society, the delusions that make life tenable and give folks with nothing to talk about something to talk about. It is the witch doctors hut, and his influence in the village. Things like facebook and twitter etc have made traditional religion less relevant, replacing the old delusions with new and essentially copying all the functions of religion from artificial community to being a cash cow for the IT priesthood well vetted in the sacred HTML, but these new social media have not been tested in deep historic time and we are one solar flare or stock market meltdown from a return to the old ways...that worked exactly the same, though few see it all for the circus it is. :coffee:
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