Religion is evil

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

What is so bad about religion?

Well, it encourages you to believe falsehoods, to be satisfied with inadequate explanations which really aren't explanations at all. And this is particularly bad because the real explanations, the scientific explanations, are so beautiful and so elegant. Plenty of people never get exposed to the beauties of the scientific explanation for the world and for life. And that's very sad. But it's even sadder if they are actively discouraged from understanding by a systematic attempt in the opposite direction, which is what many religions actually are. But that's only the first of my many reasons for being hostile to religion.

My sense is that you don't just think religion is dishonest. There's something evil about it as well.

Well, yes. I think there's something very evil about faith, where faith means believing in something in the absence of evidence, and actually taking pride in believing in something in the absence of evidence. And the reason that's dangerous is that it justifies essentially anything. If you're taught in your holy book or by your priest that blasphemers should die or apostates should die -- anybody who once believed in the religion and no longer does needs to be killed -- that clearly is evil. And people don't have to justify it because it's their faith. They don't have to say, "Well, here's a very good reason for this." All they need to say is, "That's what my faith says." And we're all expected to back off and respect that. Whether or not we're actually faithful ourselves, we've been brought up to respect faith and to regard it as something that should not be challenged. And that can have extremely evil consequences.

[...]

But don't you need to distinguish between religious extremists who kill people and moderate, peaceful religious believers?

You certainly need to distinguish them. They are very different. However, the moderate, sensible religious people you've cited make the world safe for the extremists by bringing up children -- sometimes even indoctrinating children -- to believe that faith trumps everything and by influencing society to respect faith. Now, the faith of these moderate people is in itself harmless. But the idea that faith needs to be respected is instilled into children sitting in rows in their madrasahs in the Muslim world. And they are told these things not by extremists but by decent, moderate teachers and mullahs. But when they grow up, a small minority of them remember what they were told. They remember reading their holy book, and they take it literally. They really do believe it. Now, the moderate ones don't really believe it, but they have taught children that faith is a virtue. And it only takes a minority to believe what it says in the holy book -- the Old Testament, the New Testament, the Quran, whatever it is. If you believe it's literally true, then there's scarcely any limit to the evil things you might do.

[...]

Why do you think Darwinian evolution leads logically to atheism?

Well, I'm not sure it's a logical thing. I call it consciousness raising. I think the most powerful reason for believing in a supreme being is the argument for design. Living things in particular look complicated, look beautiful, look elegant, look as though they've been designed. We are all accustomed to thinking that if something looks designed, it is designed. Therefore, it's really no wonder that before Darwin came along, just about everybody was a theist. Darwin blew that argument out of the water. We now have a much more elegant and parsimonious explanation for the existence of life.

So the big reason for believing in God used to be the argument for biological design. Darwin destroyed that argument. He didn't destroy the parallel argument from cosmology: Where did the universe come from? Where did the laws of physics come from? But he raised our consciousness to the power of science to explain things. And he made it unsafe for anyone in the future to resort automatically and uncritically to a designer just because they don't immediately have an explanation for something. So when people say, "I can't see how the universe could have come into being without God," be very careful because you've had your fingers burned before over biology. That's the consciousness-raising sense in which, I think, Darwinism leads to atheism.

[...]

A lot of what we're talking about comes down to whether science has certain limits. The basic religious critique of your position is that science can only explain so much. And that's where mystery comes in. That's where consciousness comes in.

There are two ways of responding to mystery. The scientist's way is to see it as a challenge, something they've got to work on, we're really going to try to crack it. But there are others who revel in mystery, who think we were not meant to understand. There's something sacred about mystery that positively should not be tackled. Now, suppose science does have limits. What is the value in giving the label "religion" to those limits? If you simply want to define religion as the bits outside of what science can explain, then we're not really arguing. We're simply using a word, "God," for that which science can't explain. I don't have a problem with that. I do have a problem with saying God is a supernatural, creative, intelligent being. It's simple confusion to say science can't explain certain things; therefore, we have to be religious. To equate that kind of religiousness with belief in a personal, intelligent being, that's confusion. And it's pernicious confusion.

http://www.salon.com/books/int/2006/10/13/dawkins/print.html

[ceriserose 1]

It has been rather quiet around here lately, hasn't it?

[Karen_L 1]

Why do you think Darwinian evolution leads logically to atheism?

Well, I'm not sure it's a logical thing. I call it consciousness raising. I think the most powerful reason for believing in a supreme being is the argument for design. Living things in particular look complicated, look beautiful, look elegant, look as though they've been designed. We are all accustomed to thinking that if something looks designed, it is designed. Therefore, it's really no wonder that before Darwin came along, just about everybody was a theist. Darwin blew that argument out of the water. We now have a much more elegant and parsimonious explanation for the existence of life.

I believe very strongly in God. I also believe very strongly that life on Earth (and elsewhere in the universe) evolved to its present state and is still evolving today (or would, if not for human interference). I never understood why those two beliefs HAVE TO BE mutually exclusive. Couldn't life be "designed" to change? Couldn't God or a higher being of some kind have begun life? Couldn't life in and of itself be divine? Couldn't traditional beliefs about intelligent design be allegories for a more scientific factual truth?

I once read an extremely eloquent statement from an evolutionary biologist about his belief in God and the relationship of his beliefs to his work and I will try and find it (it was years ago, so who knows if I will be able to) Basically, his point was that science and religion aren't enemies, but complimentary searches for truth and understanding.

This was an interesting article though -- I love how narrow even highly educated people can be in their thinking, i.e. either the universe is constructed 100% the way its described in The Bible/Qu'ran/etc. OR the universe is nothing more than elements interacting with one another and there can't be a God.

[Hilarious Clinton 452]

Couldn't life be "designed" to change? Couldn't God or a higher being of some kind have begun life? Couldn't life in and of itself be divine? Couldn't traditional beliefs about intelligent design be allegories for a more scientific factual truth?

I've thought about it that way too.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

What is so bad about religion?

Well, it encourages you to believe falsehoods, to be satisfied with inadequate explanations which really aren't explanations at all. And this is particularly bad because the real explanations, the scientific explanations, are so beautiful and so elegant. Plenty of people never get exposed to the beauties of the scientific explanation for the world and for life. And that's very sad. But it's even sadder if they are actively discouraged from understanding by a systematic attempt in the opposite direction, which is what many religions actually are. But that's only the first of my many reasons for being hostile to religion.

I'd like to know what specific falsehoods he speaking about, because at least my understanding of my religion, it doesn't give answers to the physical world nor should it. Religion is about embracing the mystery and finding Truth that is beyond our comprehension. To put your entire faith in the human mind IS a religion in of itself...and a very short-sighted one at that.

[Heracles 417]

What certain religions have offered society science will never match it.

Anyway, comparing science with religion is like comparing an 18 wheeler to a whale. They have nothing to do with one another.. The bible, for example, was not written in terms of a thesis on creation and the fundamentals of the universe..

It says something considering the smartest person of our time, Albert Einstein, was not an athiest..

.

Edited October 18, 2006 by Infidel

[w¡n9Nµ7 §£@¥€r 123]

Regarding Einstein, another excerpt from the same interview:

Now, there are an awful lot of people who call themselves religious -- or some people prefer to use the word "spiritual" -- even though they don't go to church. They aren't part of any organized religion. They don't believe in a personal God. Some don't even like the word "God" because there's so much baggage attached to that word. But they still have some powerful feeling that there is a transcendent reality. And they often engage in some spiritual practice in their own lives. Would you call these people "religious"?

That's a difficult question. I probably would call them religious. It depends on exactly what they do believe. The first chapter of "The God Delusion" talks about Einstein, who often used the word "God." Einstein clearly was an atheist in the sense that he didn't believe in any sort of personal God. He used the word "God" as a metaphoric name for that which we don't yet understand, for the deep mysteries at the foundation of the universe.

But I think most people would call Einstein a deist. He suggested that God may have created the laws of nature, the laws of physics, to get the universe started.

Some people have maintained that position. My judgment, reading what Einstein said, is that he was not a deist. He certainly believed in some sort of deep mystery, as do I. And it is possible to use the word "religious" to describe such a person. On that basis, one could even say that I am a religious person or Carl Sagan was a religious person. But for me, the divide comes with whether you believe there is some kind of a supernatural, personal being. And I think deists, as well as theists, believe that. By that criterion, I don't think Einstein was a deist. He certainly wasn't a theist, although the language he used might lead you to think he was. I think it's misleading to use a word like "God" in the way Einstein did. I'm sorry that Einstein did. I think he was asking for trouble, and he certainly was misunderstood.

[GaryC 7]

The guy may be educated and smart when it comes to biology but he is still an idiot. Science and the belief in God are not mutually exclusive. I believe in God. I believe that he created everything. But I also believe that he did it by creating physics and the rules of the universe with the knowledge of how it would come out. This yahoo is entitled to his beliefs but to call religion evil is way out of line. He seems to think he is the smartest person in the room but IMO he is the dumbest.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Regarding Einstein, another excerpt from the same interview:

... Einstein, who often used the word "God." Einstein clearly was an atheist in the sense that he didn't believe in any sort of personal God. He used the word "God" as a metaphoric name for that which we don't yet understand, for the deep mysteries at the foundation of the universe.

The term "God" is metaphor for most religions. Even the fact that we refer to God in the masculine form is metaphor.

BTW, many of the great philosophers such as Kant, Hegel, Descartes, Fichte, Leibniz, Rousseau, Kiekergaard, Maritain, Wittgenstein, Weil etc. believed in God without a doubt.

[one...two...tree 2,762]

Traditional "proofs" of God's Existence

1) The argument from Design.

If you found a clock and examined the mechanism within it, you would probably think that this intricate mechanism was not the outcome of mere chance, that it had been designed.

Now look at the universe; is it possible that such an intricate mechanism, from the orbits of planets round the sun to the cells in your fingernails could all have happened by chance? Surely, this enormously complex mechanism has been designed, and the being that designed it must be God.

2) The ontological argument

God is the perfect being. As He is most perfect, He must have all perfections. If God lacked existence He would not be perfect, as He is perfect he must exist.

3) The cosmological argument (God as "First cause")

Everything that exists has a cause. However, there must at some time have been a cause prior to all other causes. This 'prime mover' or first cause is necessary to explain existence. This first cause is God.

Pascal's Wager

The French mathematician Blaise Pascal (1623-62) put forward an argument that would appeal to agnostics. (An agnostic is someone who believes that it is impossible to prove God's existence.)

His argument goes something like this: God either exists or he does not. If we believe in God and he exists, we will be rewarded with eternal bliss in heaven. If we believe in God and he does not exist then at worst all we have forgone is a few sinful pleasures.

If we do not believe in God and he does exist we may enjoy a few sinful pleasures, but we may face eternal damnation. If we do not believe in God and he does not exist then our sins will not be punished.

Would any rational gambler think that the experience of a few sinful pleasures is worth the risk of eternal damnation?

Kant

Kant attempted to show how philosophy could prove the existence of God. Unfortunately, for him his previous work showed that we could not know reality directly as thing-in-itself. What is real in itself is beyond our experience. Even if God exists, we can not know God as he really is.

For Kant the Christian could have faith in God, and this faith would be consonant with reason and the categorical imperative. Given that human beings have the autonomy to create moral values, it would not be irrational to believe in a God who gives purpose to the moral realm.

Hegel

Hegel thought that the God of religion was an intuition of Absolute Spirit or Geist. Hegel's Geist is not like the transcendent (outside of our consciousness) God of traditional Christianity. For Hegel God is immanent and when we have understood that history is the process of Geist coming to know itself it appears that we are all part of Geist, or God.

Feuerbach and Marx

For Feuerbach and Marx religion is seen as the projection of the human essence onto an ideal: God does not make man. Rather "God" is the invention of human consciousness. Marx also sees that religion is part of an ideological view that encourages the oppressed to accept their fate. As he says: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the sentiment of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

"The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of men, is a demand for their real happiness. The call to abandon their illusions about their condition is a call to abandon a condition which requires illusions."

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) agreed with Kant that the existence of God could not be proven by reason. However Kierkegaard did not think that it was rational to believe in God, rather one should have faith in God even if this seems to reason to be absurd. To put it another way reason has no place in faith. God is beyond reason.

Kierkegaard is regarded as the first existentialist.

Nietzsche: The Death of God

"Have you not heard the madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place and cried incessantly, 'I seek God!, I seek God!' ... Why, did he get lost? Said one. Did he lose his way like a child? Said another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? Or emigrated?... The madman jumped into their midst and pierced them with his glances.

"'Whither is God'? He cried. 'I shall tell you. We have killed him - you and I. All of us are his murderers...'"

"...the madman fell silent and looked again at his listeners; and they to were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern on the ground, and it broke and went out. 'I came too early,' he said then; 'my time has not come yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering -it has not yet reached the ears of man."

In these passages Nietzsche is showing the inevitable unfolding anthropocentrism (lit. putting man at the centre of the world) implicit in philosophy since Kant. If we view our existence through human categories, then our concept of God is itself a human creation.

Nietzsche is not simply asserting his atheism; he is suggesting that once we are aware that the concept of God is our own creation we can no longer base our religious and moral beliefs on any notion of a divine external reality.

In the period that Nietzsche was writing, the death of God was just beginning. Western thought was starting to face the prospect of a radical change in its orientation, and it wasn't quite ready to own up to it yet.

Kierkegaard and Nietzsche represent opposite reactions to the inability of rationality to give a rock solid theoretical proof of God's existence. Kierkegaard calls for us to embrace God even if it seems an absurdity, while Nietzsche says it is time for us to create a new mode of being, with human creativity at its centre.

The atheist existentialist Sartre accepted God's death and much of his writing is attempt to look at the human condition in a world that is without a prime mover who could have provided a basis and structure for the understanding of being.

The twentieth century

Anglo American analytic philosophers of the twentieth century have tended to agree that philosophy may help us clarify religious concepts, without giving us a secure foundation for religious belief.

Many people claim to have had a religious experience, to have experienced the divine directly. This experience is direct and is of a different quality to sensory experience or intellectual discovery, and therefore outside of the scope of philosophy.

The view that the existence of God cannot be proved or disproved by philosophy has not stopped developments in modern theology. Theologians are attempting to balance the anthropocentric view of God presented by philosophers since the Enlightenment with the need to provide a spiritual path and a guide to an ethical and meaningful way of life.

http://www.philosopher.org.uk/god.htm

[Asha+Joy=Love 0]

Traditional "proofs" of God's Existence

...

Søren Kierkegaard

Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) agreed with Kant that the existence of God could not be proven by reason. However Kierkegaard did not think that it was rational to believe in God, rather one should have faith in God even if this seems to reason to be absurd. To put it another way reason has no place in faith. God is beyond reason.

...

http://www.philosopher.org.uk/god.htm

A friendly discussion about religion! How interesting.

A quick question to all discussion partners first:

Does your religious faith teach you it is right and just to mistreat or murder me for holding an opinion different from yours?

If the answer is yes, I think you have proven that religion is evil without any outside help.

If the answer is "no", then on to the friendly discussion...

One of the most persistent issues concerning belief in God is the problem of evil. A reasoned, rational and irrefutable statement of this difficulty was made by the Greek philosopher Epicurus some 2300 years ago, thus predating every modern religion practiced by man.

The Epicurean paradox (or the riddle of Epicurus)

Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?

Then he is not omnipotent.

Is he able, but not willing?

Then he is malevolent.

Is he both able and willing?

Then whence cometh evil?

Is he neither able nor willing?

Then why call him God?

[Pigu 0]

Richard Dawkins is a great scientist and a great man. However, he cannot reason a man out of a position he didn't reason himself into. Not always, at least.

Edited October 18, 2006 by Pigu

[Jenn! 918]

Does your religious faith teach you it is right and just to mistreat or murder me for holding an opinion different from yours?

If the answer is yes, I think you have proven that religion is evil without any outside help.

If the answer is "no", then on to the friendly discussion...

What do you mean by "mistreat"? I can feel mistreated even if you had no intentions to mistreat me.

For example, I do not like being told that I lack morals because I prescribe to no organized religion. That makes me feel mistreated. But certain religious people like to throw that around it seems to me...

Edited October 18, 2006 by jenn3539

[Asha+Joy=Love 0]

Does your religious faith teach you it is right and just to mistreat or murder me for holding an opinion different from yours?

If the answer is yes, I think you have proven that religion is evil without any outside help.

If the answer is "no", then on to the friendly discussion...

What do you mean by "mistreat"? I can feel mistreated even if you had no intentions to mistreat me.

For example, I do not like being told that I lack morals because I prescribe to no organized religion. That makes me feel mistreated. But certain religious people like to throw that around it seems to me...

No obscure meaning intended.

Mistreat Verb. to treat baddy. Synonyms: maltreat, abuse, insult.

I personally would categorize a religious person telling me I lack morals under 'insult'.

This causes me to be confused by your confusion. Did the people in question try to convince you that no mistreatment was intended as it was a friendly, benevolent and kind insult to your character they were throwing?

Edited October 18, 2006 by Asha+JoyEqualsLove

[mrsushi66 0]

I am not a terribly religious person and I will admit that I have not studied any religion enough to be considered knowledgable so I will admit ignorance.

My biggest problem with religion is how people use it. As I have admited I have not studied any one religion enough but what I have seen is people who feel they have to impose their beliefs of their religion on others weather they share those beliefs or not.

I think their would be far less strife in the world if people applied their beliefs to themselves and no one else and did not feel the need to try and impose them on others.

I also feel it is a huge problem in politics. Do I want a moral person in politics, yes. Do I want someone writing law and voting on law influenced by some religion, no. They were voted in by a group of people who could be from many different religions and may not share their beliefs.