Religion

[Toinho]

20 minutes ago, Eco said:

It was just a statement about how religion has been around for forever. Noting about religions thoughts on the age of the Earth or anything of the kind. 

Here is a graph of the oldest religions - 

 

Can’t see the Aboriginal Dreamtime on there, arguably dates back 65,000 years! Could say it’s not organised though, would like to hear @Spike’s thoughts. It would be a religion, right? Maybe not as we define it today? 

[tlr]

I won't claim credit for this as I saw it read it somewhere years ago, but I've always remembered 'Most people from Blackburn are religious as it's the biblical representation of Hell.' 

As for myself personally, probably atheist but I don't wade into debates about it. Maybe the Christians are right, maybe the Muslims are right, maybe the Jews are right, maybe I'm right, maybe none of us are right, maybe all of us are a bit right. I'll leave you alone if you leave me alone. If you want to know anything, ask, but that's it.

[Spike]

11 minutes ago, Toinho said:

Can’t see the Aboriginal Dreamtime on there, arguably dates back 65,000 years! Could say it’s not organised though, would like to hear @Spike’s thoughts. It would be a religion, right? Maybe not as we define it today? 

Religion? Maybe, I think it’s more of a mythology or spoken history and tradition. It will be different from language to language within Australia but if the list includes other mythologies, I can’t see why the Dreaming would  be excluded.

[Spike]

41 minutes ago, Machado said:

Grew up in a catholic family who took it somewhat seriously and went to church frequently, but the story of a Palestinian man who walked on water and rose from the dead stopped making sense around the time I hit puberty I think. Might be sounding condescending as all atheists do but that's more or less what happened.

bruz He was Jewish notPalestinian and the latter didn’t exist 

[Dr. Gonzo]

I am pretty anti-religion tbh. I think the more devout you are, the more likely you are to be a dickhead. That’s probably not true, but a lot of ultra-religious people around the world are a bunch of dickheads, so that’s what I’m basing that opinion on. Also a bunch of zealots took over the country my mum is from and actually made the country much worse for more people than the dictator that came before him. So I sort of grew up in an environment where I was encouraged to stay away from religion.

 

[Machado]

47 minutes ago, Spike said:

bruz He was Jewish notPalestinian and the latter didn’t exist 

By contemporary terms he was a Palestinian Jew but what the place was called at the time (Judea I think) is not of high importance to me; all know is the man was a very good con artist who met just enough fools to follow him around.

[Machado]

16 minutes ago, Dr. Gonzo said:

I am pretty anti-religion tbh. I think the more devout you are, the more likely you are to be a dickhead.

The most religious woman I ever met was also the nicest and most generous woman I ever met to be fair. A woman who lived her life for others. She was also very educated which was confusing to me. Again at the risk of sounding derogatory, for as intelligent as she seemed to be, she believed a snake told a woman to eat an apple which fucked the whole world up. I guess "believing" is something too complex to be understood and explained to a non-believer using a stream of rational thoughts. Probably not wording this in the best way possible but I think you know what I mean.

[Dr. Gonzo]

10 minutes ago, Machado said:

The most religious woman I ever met was also the nicest and most generous woman I ever met to be fair. A woman who lived her life for others. She was also very educated which was confusing to me. Again at the risk of sounding derogatory, for as intelligent as she seemed to be, she believed a snake told a woman to eat an apple which fucked the whole world up. I guess "believing" is something too complex to be understood and explained to a non-believer using a stream of rational thoughts. Probably not wording this in the best way possible but I think you know what I mean.

I did say I’m probably wrong tbf 

[Spike]

30 minutes ago, Machado said:

By contemporary terms he was a Palestinian Jew but what the place was called at the time (Judea I think) is not of high importance to me; all know is the man was a very good con artist who met just enough fools to follow him around.

Contemporary terms don’t apply to history 

[Spike]

55 minutes ago, Machado said:

The most religious woman I ever met was also the nicest and most generous woman I ever met to be fair. A woman who lived her life for others. She was also very educated which was confusing to me. Again at the risk of sounding derogatory, for as intelligent as she seemed to be, she believed a snake told a woman to eat an apple which fucked the whole world up. I guess "believing" is something too complex to be understood and explained to a non-believer using a stream of rational thoughts. Probably not wording this in the best way possible but I think you know what I mean.

It is because you think intelligence supercedes faith or open-mindedness, when the three should never have anything to do with eachother. 

[Honey Honey]

Atheism? Isn't that a tantrum that teenagers have when they're going through hormonal changes that turn them against their parents Kevin and Perry style?

[CaaC (John)+]

I started reading the Bible when I was young but got confused after reaching a certain chapter whatever and never bothered reading any more after that...

God created Adam & Eve who were the only living human beings at the time (according to the bible), they did their naughty bits and produced Cain & Abel so that meant there was only 4 living human beings around (according to the bible), later on in years Cain killed Abel and was banished to the Land of Nod...now, this is where I stopped reading the Bible after Cain got married?...who the bloody hell did he marry if Adam, Eve, Cain & Abel were the only living beings on the planet Earth?

No, I am not a religious person as such and after doing my tours of duties in Northern Ireland in the '70s I questioned myself was there such a thing as a God after walking into mortuaries in Belfast checking as part of our duties and seeing dead people, men, women, children lying there, Catholic, Protestant and others after being caught up in a shooting or explosions and knowing that the people that caused this would go to their local church and say to the priest whoever "Father, I have sinned, please forgive me" which he/she was forgiven...until the next time when they would kill again and do the latter at their local church...a never-ending story. 

I mentioned the above to the wife's Uncle who is an ex-army man and we both served together in Germany and he is Irish and religious and has seen exactly what I have on our tours of duty but he forgives and said to me "John, we have to believe in something?", I left it at that and I still do not believe there is an unknown person above who looks down on us and sees all the killings and disasters and still lets it happen.

I can remember when our son was young around 8 and 9-year-old and said to me "Dad...whats heaven and what is hell?", I had to think for a minute then replied "Son, we are living in hell now with all the disasters around this world on this planet Earth and all the killings, when we die we will go to the real Earth called heaven where human beings can walk around without being killed by a disaster or blown apart and killed by another human being.

A guy at work before I retired said that he believed that when we die we will go to the sky and become one of the billions of stars twinkling away and then we will have a choice, either stay up above twinkling away or explode in the heavens above and return to Earth as a newborn child. 

Religious Organizations around the world are billionaires. 

[Machado]

12 hours ago, Spike said:

It is because you think intelligence supercedes faith or open-mindedness

In reality in the second half of my post I tried to argue the opposite of that.

[Inverted]

I'm an atheist but I'm pretty chill about religion. I used to be extremely anti-religion as your typical New Atheist teenager, and I think there is a part of me that is still suspicious of people who are really into organised religion, but I'm also quite fascinated in religion from a historical and aesthetic point of view, for example religious music and art.

I have a bible that I pick up and read now and then, much in the same way as I like reading Greek or Roman mythology. 

My family is historically pretty mixed catholic-protestant, and my parents and grandparents were more of the vague god-believing type than actually being religious in any specific way. 

 

[Bluewolf]

18 hours ago, Stan said:

2 options. 

Believe there's a dinosaur called the Hindusaurus Rex and be done with it. 

 

Ask @Bluewolf and/or @CaaC (John) and if their memory is intact, they should be able to solve the long-time problem of what happened in the beginning... 

Got no time for Religion to be honest, My Mother tried her best getting us to go to church on a Sunday for about a year but gave up in the end when we moaned all the time about having to get dressed up for it.. As you get older you realise what a massive worldwide con Religion is.. Don't knock people for wanting to have faith in something and I am sure there are some good ones that actually help people get through tough times but it's not for me... There is no God and that's the end of it as far as I am concerned 

[Spike]

3 hours ago, Machado said:

In reality in the second half of my post I tried to argue the opposite of that.

That doesn't mean you don't hold those beliefs either, people are irrational

[The Artful Dodger]

I find religion really interesting, after all it is just another branch of philosophy really. An attempt to find meaning. I think a lot of people find it hard to separate religion from the Church, or whichever established authority claims to have power over believers. The Church is just humanity in power; corrupt, cynical and greedy, like humans so often are but that's not the whole story of religion. In particular the Chinese 'religions'  seems to totally renounce power, they have a spirituality which cannot be found in the Abrahamic religions and I think is the most free of abuse and hypocrisy. 

Another thing is what replaces religion when it dies. I think all societies need a common set of principles and beliefs that are shared by all, other side cultures and identities will always exist and we shouldn't try to become a monoculture but I do think we fail to realise the role that religion has played as a cement that glues a society together at times. For the UK we seem to have replaced it with mass consumerism, an obsession with materialism and personal beauty, with little behind it. I don't personally believe in any religion but I don't know if its decline is wholly good, I certainly feel my own society is as bad as any religious one.

Growing older you realise that there is no temporal justice on earth, bad people are not punished. That alone gives you a real strong hope that there is something eternal, that we are judged.

[Toinho]

To me, the fact there’s more than one religion kind of gives it away doesn’t it? 

[Eco]

10 minutes ago, Toinho said:

To me, the fact there’s more than one religion kind of gives it away doesn’t it? 

Gives what away?

[Toinho]

3 minutes ago, Eco said:

Gives what away?

That only one belief is right...or everyone is wrong. 

[Eco]

28 minutes ago, Toinho said:

That only one belief is right...or everyone is wrong. 

Not really. 

You can belief that God manifests himself in many ways to suit different cultures, but in the end it's all the same God.

[Stan]

7 hours ago, Eco said:

Not really. 

You can belief that God manifests himself in many ways to suit different cultures, but in the end it's all the same God.

Not in some religions. 

[CaaC (John)+]

I think the ancient Egyptians worshipped Dog's as there image of a supreme human being, Dog spelt backwards says, God?   

[Stan]

11 minutes ago, CaaC (John) said:

I think the ancient Egyptians worshipped Dog's as there image of a supreme human being, Dog spelt backwards says, God?   

Fucking hell, illuminati right here. 

[Toinho]

27 minutes ago, Stan said:

Not in some religions. 

Exactly. Shintoism for example.