Papal Visit to the UK

[Asher]

I wasn't aware cavemen were religious.

Explaining the unknown with fiction, faith, and fantasies does not mean people are inherently religious. It just means they hate not knowing things, and they'd rather make **** up than admit it. Any experience in a corporate environment will show you that.

[Arrian]

There is certainly truth in that.

I think you are dismissing something more, Asher, but you're mostly right. People HATE having to admit (even to themselves) that they don't know things. A LOT of things.

-Arrian

[C0ckney]

asher really, you don't think caveman asked themselves questions like "why i am here?" or "is this all there is?". you don't think they looked upon the sky, the moon, the stars, the sun etc. as otherworldly objects of wonderment and worshipped them or practised totemism? that they buried their dead carefully and with ceremony so that they might pass on to the next world or some such?

[C0ckney]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_religion

here's a wiki article about the subject of prehistoric religion.

[Asher]

asher really, you don't think caveman asked themselves questions like "why i am here?" or "is this all there is?".

Existentialism is not religion.

you don't think they looked upon the sky, the moon, the stars, the sun etc. as otherworldly objects of wonderment and worshipped them or practised totemism? that they buried their dead carefully and with ceremony so that they might pass on to the next world or some such?

Superstition is not necessarily religion either. A lot of these practices formed over time and have real world use behind them (eg, burying the dead to avoid diseases and decomposition smells). Sometimes they happen coincidentally with other behaviours which then get seen as an essential part of the "ritual" because the people don't know if the act of burying the bodies prevents the diseases from spreading, or if it's the ritual behind the burial. It's not necessarily religion.

You seem to be confusing ritual with religion.

[Asher]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prehistoric_religion

here's a wiki article about the subject of prehistoric religion.

Oh look, some specific groups of people MAY have worshipped animals. That certainly is proof that all humans are inherently religious.

Thanks. Guess we can shut down the discussion now.

[Asher]

I'm more inclined to suspect the early examples of "religion" in that article is more of an example of how damaging groupthink is, and how certain people can enable cultlike behaviours with simple social engineering.

[Boris Godunov]

It's not bull****. Atheist extremism has caused a whole hell of a lot more suffering lately than has religious extremism -- Islamist militants included.

Yes, it's bull****, since the Nazis weren't atheists.

The extremist Antisemitism in Europe had its roots in religion, not atheism. Jews had been continually persecuted over the centuries and the Holocaust was the culmination of said attitudes.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

From the pope's speech today-

"Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live.

I also recall the regime's attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a "reductive vision of the person and his destiny""

****.

[MikeH]

I think I quoted that earlier. and **** is right!

i think to characterise religious belief as simply filling in the blanks until science can provide the answers is taking a very limited view of things and ignores the fact that there are many questions that cannot be answered using the scientific method.

No there aren't. Name one?

There are things we don't have answers to yet. There are things we know we can't measure yet, there aren't questions that can never be answered.

[MikeH]

asher really, you don't think caveman asked themselves questions like "why i am here?" or "is this all there is?"

Science can answer those questions.

[DanS]

Bugs: I have heard that there were about a million people -- including many clergy and religious -- who were killed for subversive thoughts and activities by the Nazis. That's what he's referring to.

[giblets]

Why is he blaming atheism for it if the Nazis weren't atheists?

[Arrian]

Hold the phone. I thought he making the old "commies were atheists, therefore all of the bad stuff commies did is the fault of atheism" argument. He's trying to sneak the Nazis in too?

Or is he making a positive argument for religion (we had some good people who stood up to the Nazis and died for it) w/o trying to pin that on atheism (no need, he's got the commies for that).

-Arrian

[lightblue]

Humans have evolved an excellent pattern recognition algorithm in their brains, but if some of the data needed to make sense of a phenomenon is missing, it will fill the gaps. Superstition (religion is just organised mass superstition), fairy tales and god(s) help fill those gaps.

As a rational human being, any belief in a supernatural power that takes a interest in our struggles or our sins is based on so little actual evidence (and don't quote coincidences (or miracles in Bible speak) to refute this) that it truly saddens me to still come across kids that have been brainwashed by their parents to believe in this hokum.

As for the Nazis, last I checked they were loosely based on a Christian ideology, with some members going off on more occult and Nordic routes, neither of which are atheist in any way shape of form. I'll give you Stalin and the Khmer Rouge etc., but as someone said earlier, any ideology (and in both cases the Communist ideology was far more important than a humanist atheism) will have some extremists who will forcibly press their views on others. Religions used to have the trademark.