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God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything?
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“With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion.”
― Steven Weinberg
I suggest you give this book a read if you want to learn just how wrong you are on all of this religious denialism you're presenting here:
I'm on the Peterson sub reddit lol.. I'm here for the debate, I enjoy having my ideas challenged and tested because it helps me find flaws in my arguments and ideals and hopefully get closer to the truth...
I don't find many right wingers who have more than a bumper sticker idea of what they believe in and why they believe in it.. I love to debate about Ayn Rand, the founders of this nation and what it was actually founded on, and western civilization, human rights, and liberal democracy, my Father a pot smoking hippy turned radical right wing religious zealot who got arrested protesting vietnam in the 60's and arrested again protesting abortion in the 90's got me interested in debating about these things from an early age about 10 years old when I started reading political and religious books, I'm somewhat knowledgeable in history, theology, anthropology, and psychology, and love to learn and I take advantage the opportunity to test what I believe in, conversation with people who agree with your point view is boring, and often a complete waste of time..
My problem with Peterson's view of "postmodernism" is that while I agree that the death of commonly held truths in a society is dangerous and we should try to get back to some common foundational things to agree on as a basis for truth and values I don't think that that basis should be an ideology that has repeatedly been the driving force behind willful injustice and atrocities but has been the justification for many genocides.. In a reddit post its hard to put it better than Christopher Hitchens did in his book God Is Not Great..
well, i was never very religious to begin with but then i read Christopher Hitchen's "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything" and that was the absolute end of me and religion
Let's not forget that this has been baked into people's heads since the "Garden of Eden" fable. The founding "document" for the religion says that knowledge comes from possessed snakes and is bad and you get kicked out of paradise if you dare get educated. I'm sure there are kids books with pictures that have it as a bedtime story. As the dearly missed Christopher Hitchens said, "Religion poisons everything".
I met Hitchens several times and I own several books that he personally signed for me.
You might want to actually completely read one of his books before you start claiming to know what he thought and how he felt.
Might I recommend you start with God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything?
Secular ideologies can be just as authoritarian as religious ideologies. re: communist china, the state is their "religion" and it will crush any potential challenger, including atheists. It is not a fair representation of a potential secular society. Secular humanism would be a far more ideal "state philosophy."
I'm not as well versed in Mughals or House of Baghdad. The Renaissance was inspired by humanism and was a break from the theocracy that came before, and further distanced itself with the enlightenment.
God Is Not Great. How Religion Poisons Everything. by Christopher Hitchens.
He said it best.
edit: I sincerely encourage you to read it.
>I don’t see any reason to assume studying brain physiology will be the only method
"God did it" is not an honest possibility in the race.
> which is informative for ethics
We know ancient mythology fall short of being beneficial. God is Not Great. How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens is a good read.
> some scientific discovery will show free will doesn’t exist.
It may be that emergent properties like free will and consciousness will never be understood from a biological bases. If this is the case and we never know why we experience these things, it still is not evidence for a god.
> I don’t see any reason to assume talking about free will and consciousness isn’t well defined
This is not an assumption. It's a fact. LOL Just like the word "god".
> But why not instead assume that scientific language is inadequate because it is inappropriate language for the task?
Scientific methodology may be inadequate for explaining some of our human experiences. I think I made this point. Again, god is not an answer for questions we do not have the answers to. Saying "god did it" adds nothing to our understanding. We don't know why lighting occurs, for example. What does "god did it" add to our understanding?
> It assumes without argument scientific language is the one which is actually correct
No, this is your claim and the claim of theists to create a straw man argument, not mine and not that of scientists. Science is the best method we have of understanding the physical/material world.
Religious belief is the belief in the reality of the mythological, supernatural, or spiritual aspects of a religion. All religious beliefs are evil. This sounds blunt, but I am not alone or extreme in believing this is the case.
Equality and the golden rule aren't religious beliefs. Those are simply good practices that a religion has suggested its followers live by (i.e. religious practices). There are plenty of good life tips that are passed down as part of a religion (e.g. meditation, mindfulness, etc.). But all of those can be followed with zero religious influence. To the extent that they are advised to be followed because a past holy person or deity advised it... well, that becomes a dangerous path. But a practice that is based on ethics or science (not deities or spirituality) is not inherently religious.
That's a mildly-defensible logical position, but once you realize that you are smart enough to say "there's no such thing as a flying spaghetti monster" and that no one has to prove 100% that it doesn't exist for you to use your brain and make the "bold statement" that a magical flying invisible being made of spaghetti doesn't exist .... you will realize why you are an atheist and not an agnostic. Just give it a few years of listening to ridiculous explanations for why there might be a God. "Who can really know?!" Umm, you can. I bet that you find it more than "not very plausible". You know it's bullshit. So instead of dancing around with philosophical possibilities and definitions of the word "know", just be honest with yourself. For all intents and purposes, to the extent that anything is a fact (e.g. how can you prove anything at all?!?!), it's a fact: there is no God and all spiritual aspects of all religions are lies. Just because there are some good life tips mixed in does not make the spirituality of any religion any more sane.
As for religion being evil, I would start by suggesting that you read a book by Christopher Hitchens, such as God is Not Great: Why Religion Poisons Everything. You may come to agree that saying God doesn't exist is more than my right; it's important for humanity and no more arrogant than saying that China is a real place on the other side of the planet.
Its in his book "God is not Great, How religion Poisons everything" in the chapter "A Short Digression on the Pig".
Page 40 in this version: http://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1264538928&sr=8-1
OP could add God is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything for a little light reading as well.
She might get the message that a 5th Bible next year is a wasted effort.
- The God Delusion
- God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, by Christopher Hitchens
- Why I Am Not a Christian, by Bertrand Russell
Agree. Recently finished reading this book. It's great. He's got a lot of receipts.
https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966
Yes, religion poisons everything. There's a book.
i cannot recommend enough God Is Not Great by the late, great, Christopher Hitchens.
just demolishes religions.
You'd like the book God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens.
Yer bro, go with an open mind, I give you a link to the bible I use, I make sure to take it with me whenever I attend
I suggest discreetly replacing the Bible with this book...
I’ll link all of the resources that I had at the time. Somebody here will probably give you a more structured approach, but this stuff worked out well for me.
DarkMatter2525 on YouTube. Sort by ‘most popular’ and just start clicking around. Pretty funny stuff that makes some great points.
The Atheist Experience. Call-in based show with Matt Dillahunty. The show has been around for more than a decade. It’s an ‘atheist classic’ so to speak.
NonStampCollector on YouTube. Again, sort by ‘most popular’ and start clicking around. Funny, intentionally shitty animations with extremely salient points.
“Does God Exist?” debate. Around two hours.
God Is Not Great by the late Christopher Hitchens. I’ll be honest, Hitchens is not an easy read, but you’ll understand as long as you have a laptop or phone nearby to lookup definitions. Again, probably better options than this, but I’m just linking what worked for me personally as a 18-19 year old kid.
Finding Purpose in a Godless World by Ralph Lewis. Guy is an accomplished psychiatrist and he gives a really unique perspective.
Hitchens. And it's a fantastic book!
https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966
There's an entire book written on the subject: God is not great, by Christopher HItchens.
This is why you feel that way. It's a must read:
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything https://www.amazon.com/dp/0446697966/ref=cm_sw_r_other_apa_MxPnAbDPJ9S49
Believing what they want is not the problem.
The problem is the harm religion does when it gains power over a populous. You might explain how religion is harming him.
Without religion opposing medical science (evolution, stem cell research, millions of children taught science is wrong and prayer is the only way a person can be healed, cutting funding to research as a general practice) he might be living to 200 in the body of a 30 year old, cancer might be a bit of medical history right now. Climate change might not be looming over us with possible extinction - a real health care crisis if there ever was one.
Without the wars religion has caused recently coupled with the enormous cost of religion itself we probably would not have a debt or a cast of 900,000 injured service personnel, some of which will need medical care for decades.
Highly religious areas typically have higher rates of social ills like crime, abortion, drug use, teen pregnancy, divorce, poverty, obesity and rape. All these social ills degrade the world he lives in. It harms the people he holds dear even if not in a direct way he can see.
Slavery was championed and justified by the religious long before some turned against their religion and opposed it. Jim Crow was held in place almost entirely by religious groups like the KKK that burned crosses before their victims. He is living with that legacy. When he fears to go into the black areas of his town, he living the legacy of religion. Slavery is written into the holy scriptures of Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens. https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966
Things like guilt and nightmares continue for as long as some part of you entertains the possibility that some of their beliefs might be true. Literally none of them are. The entire belief system is fiction. But you can't take my word for it. It would be good to do a significant amount of reading on the subject. Some books I would suggest:
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
A History of God by Karen Armstrong
Combating Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan
A Manual for Creating Atheists Paperback by Peter Boghossian
I say he should pass out this book instead!
http://www.amazon.com/God-Is-Not-Great-Everything/dp/0446697966
Come /r/atheism, let's get him the money.
Also, if you have time, read God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Hitchens.
Dearest Sir,
Watch this. I presume you've read the bible, have you read the case against? Here are two books I recommend. 1 and 2. I'm not going to answer your argument as it goes beyond rationality and is too poor to continue a rational debate. Please educate yourself either through what I have shown you or other means.
Yours truly,
A fellow mammal.
thoughtfull powerfull mean polarizing logical, yet a bit biased. just a bit. or anything from umberto eco.
Don’t let man fool you. - God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything https://www.amazon.com/dp/0446697966/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_XFI0CbJAEBKG4
The Anti-Buddha - Siddhartha: A Novel https://www.amazon.com/dp/0553208845/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_nGI0Cb6NA5W1Y
https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966
this is just one of them.
I found Christopher Hitchens' God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything a good introduction to one of the largest "curtains" on Earth, a belief in God.
https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966
Hitchens is very intelligent and articulate, world-famous for debating and his writings.
Religious belief is the belief in the reality of the mythological, supernatural, or spiritual aspects of a religion. "Love they neighbor" is not a religious belief. A religious belief is that "I should only treat other people well because God told me to", because it could lead to similarly-insane logic being applied to an unethical position (e.g. "I hate gay people and/or their actions because God told me to").
To be clear, all religious beliefs are evil. This sounds blunt, but I am not alone or extreme in believing this is the case.
I can't defend something I know nothing about. I am happy to defend free speech though and it always better to debate ideas rather than try to have them removed from common discourse. This is a principle I will defend.
No I compared two sets of protesters and your willingness to defend one group and condemn the other simply because popular opinion is so heavily behind you.
You said yourself that you think Sharia is an idea of idiots- but them in the same thread condemn those who speak out against it as Nazis. I think you might be a victim of social engineering.
You should try- "God is not great how religion poisons everything"
http://www.amazon.com/God-Is-Not-Great-Everything/dp/0446697966
Edit: Buddhism isn't very peaceful. I suggest reading God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens.
I remember in the 90s the purple headed sheik or something like that (which was manifested in Saddam somehow) was the harbinger of end times according to one of the cult leaders on the 700 club or something.
The end times were coming 'soon' in the biblical times but we've survived 2,000+ years since then.
I know it may seem offensive, but the bible was and is not in any way a prophetic product. It's a cobbled together mess of disparate and contradictory parables the Middle Eastern region desire to maintain control. Free yourself from it.
I might recommend nearly any book by Bart Ehrman, but specifically Jesus, Interrupted.
He studied at Moody Bible Institute, Wheaton College, and Princeton Theological Seminary.
God is not great by Hitchens is also a good read about how religion poisons everything. Even as an atheist this book floored me at how much religion is used to instill fear and do ugly things to humanity.
Te dejo para que te eduques
https://www.amazon.com/God-Not-Great-Religion-Everything/dp/0446697966
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https://www.amazon.com/Missionary-Position-Mother-Teresa-Practice/dp/1455523003
I would argue that any benefit brought by religion would be amplified if obtained elsewhere, and without these negative extremism consequences. If you're interested, Hitchens wrote a fascinating book called god is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, which is what my previous comment was referencing.
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