Through the Eyes of the Devoutly Religious

I love The Thinking Atheist.

Oh sure, when you actually look at the devoutly religious they do look ridiculous. There’s a “but” somewhere but I just can’t think of it.

You understand her life is her journey and you allow it to take it’s course.

:::sigh::: Yes, I know. The stand back and let her find her path route makes sound sense, but is proving more difficult in practice. Ah well, I will try harder.

(“Do or do not–there is no try” I know Yoda! Shut up!)

Tell her she should learn more and more about Christianity. She’ll like that idea. She could then start with church history or reading the whole Bible.

That should be eye-opening for her.

Belief in God is just a highly visible manifestation of the problem.

It’s the irrational belief in any framework that is unsupported by rational thought. If Suzy attributed everything to her horoscope or the space aliens from Planet X, we’re talking about the same thing: an individual ceding control of their lives to a haphazard and contradictory belief system.

The problem is making the transition. Religion is more like an addiction – it provides comfort, it feels good … but you eventually have to indulge more and more to get the same level of satisfaction. And you’re sure as hell disinclined to listen to anyone who thinks otherwise.

“goes. She’s happy and content and not harming anybody… ” I disagree, I think religion is harmful (but I am more antheistic than most). Also, when living in a fucked up social and economic system like the one that exists both nationally and worldwide, voluntary participation and inaction do involve harm. Instead of having to take real, concrete action (even upper class bandaid ones), she does nothing while she sits near the top of a really screwed up global heirarchy.

Tim,
I can’t figure out why you think Cat is full of hate. I also can’t find anything to disagree with in Cat’s post, so maybe I’m a hate filled, spiteful misanthrope. But then again, I already knew that; my Catholic neighbor told me so.

That video is f-ing brilliant!

@tim –

“People are always going to have delusional beliefs – if you think you can eliminate that – you are delusional yourself.”

Yeah, and there will always be child abuse, so why try to stop specific cases when we find out about them?

Improvement is worth striving for, even if perfection is unattainable.

“That does more in any given day for my cause of equality than partisan groups like the the HRC has done in the last decade.”
–evidence?

Everyday Atheists,

I might have stated it differently, but I’m on the same page with @cat. One must willfully ignore reality on the ground to ever conclude that religious belief isn’t harmful. One person’s belief (say, Suzie), might not be harmful in isolation. But in the aggregrate, religious belief does a great deal of harm to a society.

Please explain this without talking about the extremes. We can all agree that when a person flies a plane into a building in the name of religion that is horrible. But your comment was on the whole, so that takes into account all of the good things done by people who are religious or the good things even done by religious institutions. For example, a Catholic priest abusing a child and the church ignoring that is horrible, but that same church sponsors orphanages around the world and feeds and clothes the homeless worldwide.

Also, please give an example of a society with no religion that has shown the benefits of it being taken away. The societies that have sought to impose a state based on the absence of religion have been horrible examples of human rights violations, exploitation of women and children, slave labor etc…

Robert, sponsoring orphanages is the least they can do after all the work they put into fighting birth control.

In my eyes, the greatest harm that religion causes is convincing people that being dishonest to oneself is honorable.

The societies that have sought to impose a state based on the absence of religion have been horrible examples of human rights violations, exploitation of women and children, slave labor etc…

I never heard of a “state based on the absence of religion.” I’ve heard of states based on completely centralizing the control of production, I’ve heard of states based on completely dispersing the control of production, and I’ve heard of states based on a mixture of the two. In fact, the mixtures are every single country existing today.

In the few states that have suppressed or oppressed religion, their human rights abuses weren’t because of the “absence of religion.” It was because they were too far to one of those extremes.

There have been a few states that have imposed one religion on their people, regardless of the control of production thing. They have the worst human rights records of all.

I’m not saying correlation is causation, I’m just sayin’.

Steve,

You want a country where religion harms society: see the United States in the last few decades. qed

Do you really think we are worse off now then we were a few decades ago due to religion in this country? I would argue just the opposite and that is that we are worse off now as a society due to the absence of the conservative values championed by mainstream religion in this country.

Cortex,

In my eyes, the greatest harm that religion causes is convincing people that being dishonest to oneself is honorable.

Please explain.

McWaffle,

Firstly, I’d go with widespread, religious-based public opposition to stem cell research, abortion rights, and same-sex marriage. Those are pretty common, certainly not on the fringes. Additionally, I’d point toward religious charities/organizations that discriminate on religious grounds. The Boy Scouts, for example, or the Salvation Army (who throw away Harry Potter toys instead of donating them, according to some anecdotal evidence I’ve seen.)

I would have to disagree with your assessment that religious opposition to embryonic stem cell research, protection of the rights of the unborn or opposition to same sex marriage and throwing away a few toys shows that religion does more harm then good.

Secondly, it’s a straw man argument to say that we want religion to be “taken away”. Nobody here advocates that. We may want it to “go away” but there is a huge difference there. And yeah, life in the USSR sucked, we know, but it wasn’t because religion was taken away, and it isn’t a good example of what anybody here is talking about.

Taken away was a poor choice of words on my part.

If you want an example of a country where religion has GONE away to positive effect, I’d point you toward Scandinavia.

By what standards was it worse because of religion and how is it better? For example, it is my understanding that marriage is now almost nonexistent and that more then 60% of the children are born out of wedlock.

Richard,

I agree that theocracies have a bad track record for human rights in some parts of the world. I also know that highly religious countries have been strong advocates for human rights. ( Correlation, I know.)

But my question really hasn’t been answered as of yet- the proposition was that religion on the whole makes a society worse then one where the people are religious so that you can say that religion does more harm then good. That is what I am still waiting to see.

Robert W,

If Suzie were content to pray her little prayers and ignore the doctors and farmers and engineers who are actively working to make her world a better place, that might be fine.

But in 5 minutes Suzie is going to be out signing a referendum that controls who I can marry because she thinks a god told her to.

Blissful ignorance is one thing, I guess, but when you’re sticking your nose into people’s private lives, and sticking your religion into government, this is an abuse of personal beliefs. When you believe that an omnipotent being, which created all the universe, is in your corner and supports your beliefs over the beliefs of others, then your sense of entitlement over others is going to be near infinite. You can feed 10 million people in the name of charity, but when you kick ONE person down, you’ve undone your own good works.

Robert,

I can envision a society where the presence of a religion does more good than harm. But the religion I would envision would not have a God passing judgment on people. I think whenever there exists a theology that has a God passing judgment, the believers will emulate the God and pass judgment themselves on others.

Then you get the problems associated with the “tyranny of the majority” amplified because the believers think they are acting as agents of God (hands and feet).

Historically, whatever societal biases the majority has gets conveniently added to scripture as if it is also the bias of the deity. Then the biases become even more entrenched in the society. You are screwed if you think differently and are in the minority.

I don’t think the problem is with religion in general. I think the problem is with religions that have a God who judges.

Robert,

By what standards was it worse because of religion and how is it better? For example, it is my understanding that marriage is now almost nonexistent and that more then 60% of the children are born out of wedlock.

Why is “in wedlock” good and “out of wedlock” bad? Yes, it’s true that fewer couples marry in Scandinavia. As far as I know, there are no tax incentives for doing so and no stigma attached to not doing so. That doesn’t mean that the couples in question are less committed. Do you have evidence that Scandinavian couples break up with more frequency than American couples? Considering the divorce rate here, I would be interested to see evidence that the Nordic countries are somehow worse off.

As someone who was raised by parents who are not married (the law prevents them from doing so), I do not automatically assume that unmarried couples are less committed to each other and to their children. My parents have been together for over 30 years. Unlike many of our peers, my brother and I were raised in a stable, intact, two-parent family. Do have evidence that this is not the case for many of the Scandinavian couples you mention?

Furthermore, Robert, have you ever actually been to any of the Nordic countries? I have visited Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and the Netherlands, and I was quite impressed by all of them. Relatively few people there believe in a personal god (and almost no one espouses the type of fundamentalism you follow), yet they have stable societies with a high standard of living. There is no evidence that the citizens of these nations are suffering because they lack belief in deities.

Anna and Hoverfrog,

No I haven’t been to the Nordic countries and i am sure they are a fine place. In fact a study came out today that said by some standards they are a very happy place to be.

I quoted that example about the lack of marriage as just that, an example of one of the effects of a secular society. And although in your cases you have had long term stable relationships, I would think that this is not the norm for couples that live together without the commitment of a marriage. From my understanding there are multiple studies showing that people who live together tend to break up more often then those in marriages. A high divorce rate is already bad for women and children, simply living together without legal protection and a higher break up rate would I am sure be even worse.

Anna,

I am no expert on Scandinavian marriage practices so I won’t pretend to be.

I don’t think you can assume that lack of marriage necessarily follows from a more secular society. China is officially atheistic, and they place a high value on marriage.

An interesting fact about china is that since the government officially allowed for freedom of religion the number of Christians in that country has risen from a few million to over 130 million and is growing at a dramatic rate. It may soon be one of the largest Christian countries in the world if that trend continues.

Unfortunately, with our high divorce rate, it’s clear that marriage does not guarantee a permanent relationship.

I agree with that but I don’t think that it can be blamed on the institution of marriage but on the break down of that institution. Marriage has been devalued in our country which I see has bad for our society. In the countries we are talking about it is almost non existent. Whether that is good or bad for a society in the long run we will find out because the trend is relatively new.

I think you may very well be right that in those countries the need to marry to achieve legal rights and protection may not be there but I think that marriage does more then that. If entered into with the right commitment you are saying to your mate that you will be with them until you die, through the good times and the bad, through sickness and health and not just as long as you want to. To me that means something.

Unfortunately, in our society where marriage is still the norm, too many people go through it with the idea that it is disposable and in reality it is for the wedding not the marriage. I have seen the problems that this causes for the couples and the inevitable children. I would be curious to see the effect of not even going through the ritual does for a society.

As far as the US leading in divorce rates, that would be easy if the rest of the world is not getting married in the first place.

Robert W.

although in your cases you have had long term stable relationships, I would think that this is not the norm for couples that live together without the commitment of a marriage.

Robert, it isn’t about the commitment of marriage but about commitment. I’m aware of marriages where one or both partners cheated or abandoned their commitment fairly early in the relationship just as I’m aware of unmarried couples where the same has happened. Marriage does not equal commitment.

From my understanding there are multiple studies showing that people who live together tend to break up more often then those in marriages.

Coudl you produce links to them?

A high divorce rate is already bad for women and children, simply living together without legal protection and a higher break up rate would I am sure be even worse.

In what ways? What legal protection do a married couple enjoy that I do not when it comes to a break up?

Hoverfrog,

here is one link to a sampling of the studies of the negative impact on living together:

http://www.leaderu.com/critical/cohabitation-socio.html

let me say that I am glad that you and your girlfriend are defying the odds and I pray for your continued happiness.

Robert

You are committing a mistake to believe that a social idea, your “institution of marriage,” is infallible, and that people are to blame when the idea doesn’t work.

Social compacts are about people, made by people, and for people, not things to be served by people. The institution of marriage doesn’t work because it’s a flawed idea to demand that all people live according one set of rules. People are different from each other, and no singular idea of what a relationship should be will work for everyone.

There is little research to show that embroynic stem cell research has cured any disease that can’t be also cured with adult stem cells. I balance “women’s autonomy” when it entails killing unborn children. As for the oppressed groups I grant you religious groups stand in the way of same sex marriage, but of course I think the institution of marriage between a man and a woman is a good thing for society that should be protected not weakened.

1. Cutting of one option to seek a cure when both lines of research are more likely to succeed is a mistake.

2. Unborn people use a woman’s body to develop, as it is her body, she has the only and ultimate say in who can use it.

3. You’re an authoritarian. Expanding legal rights to encompass the spectrum of adult relationships will not hurt marriage. Additionally if marriage was so good it should be able to prove it’s superiority on it’s own without needing outside force people to live in that one sort relationship. Unfortunately for the institution of marriage it does not demonstrate that it is the only good way for adults to have a relationship and families to develop even with the additional outside support it is given already.

Privileged few? Are you talking about the 90% plus of religious people around the globe as a few? Are you talking about the millions of religious people that have been killed for their faith throughout the centuries? And you would replace it with what exactly? An atheist state perhaps? We have seen the effects of that already.

Yes privileged few. Most religious people are ignorant dupes supporting a hierarchical system that benefits just a few at the top of the pyramid.

And I wouldn’t force change on people like authoritarians which de facto religious people are. Your ancient, bunk ideas will give way to better, more humane ideas so long as the millions of faithful do not murder millions over faith as they always have throughout the centuries.

Hoverfrog,

I fail to see how marriage changes that.

I think that if people enter into a marriage at least they are taking a step that makes it harder for them to walk away. They are also making a public commitment that might make them think twice before they just walk away. I’m not saying that all people would be effected by making such a public and binding commitment but clearly some are. Just as some who do don’t take it seriously at all.

But if as the studies i linked are true and people who live together break up two to three times more then people who get married, then it has to have some effect. Maybe like signed a contract of employment or a lease that you have to fulfill and can’t just walk away from. (not a completely accurate analogy but close)

Millions? Very large exaggeration. Millions were actually killed by faithless people over the last century, not the other way around. Maybe not to promote their faithlessness, but they certainly were atheists and their ideas certainly weren’t more humane.

So all the faith on faith violence between all the faithts in the world didn’t happen and isn’t happening?

So by your logic, killing unborn innocent people based upon a decision of another with the power to do so is more humane then trying to protect the life of the innocent?

I think that no one’s organs and body should be used by another against their will.

What you think is humane is maternal slavery, and your logic dictates that it’s more humane to force a person to donate their organs against their will so whoever you deem “innocent” will live.

The power to decide who is “innocent” and “saved” and who is “lost” and dictate what people get to do to them based on irredeemable, meritless superstitions is blatant authoritarianism.

R.T.,

So all the faith on faith violence between all the faithts in the world didn’t happen and isn’t happening?

Of course it has happened. My point was that you ignored the millions killed by atheists in your desire to blame religion for all the harm in the world.

What you think is humane is maternal slavery, and your logic dictates that it’s more humane to force a person to donate their organs against their will so whoever you deem “innocent” will live.

Yes it does. Because by any reasonable standard the baby conceived by the actions of others is innocent and the life of the innocent should be paramount. It is in every other context then to those who support choice. And the last time I checked, a pregnant women still had all her organs after she delivered her baby.

The power to decide who is “innocent” and “saved” and who is “lost” and dictate what people get to do to them based on irredeemable, meritless superstitions is blatant authoritarianism.

So when would an unborn child not be innocent?

ACN,

There is another possibility though, that even if the data is correct, the relationship isn’t causal, but purely correlative. For example, for several reasons, it could be that on aggreggate, due to social pressures/conditioning, the people who are most committed were also the people who chose to get married.

Maybe. But the end result is still the same. More people breaking up and unfortunately a lot of them having children that are negatively affected by those choices.

Hoverfrog,

How so? I don’t mean to be obtuse but does a marriage certificate put a lock on the door or chain a couple together? the only thing stopping someone from walking away is their desire to stay or at least their unwillingness to leave. How does a marriage change that?

In a marriage it is harder just to leave in a legal sense if nothing else. If a couple is just living together, one could just walk out and the relationship is legally over. They may have some contractual obligations on leases for example but otherwise they can just leave. In a marriage in order for the relationship to be legally over you have to go through an annulment or a divorce. there are also instant and recognized legitimacy of the children with corresponding obligations. More then once faced with the expense of a divorce people have reconciled when they otherwise would have walked away.

Also if you are so keen on marriage then why not allow it for gay couples? You’re always going on about how they shouldn’t be allowed to marry but here you are saying that it makes people more committed. Surely that’s a good thing.

Different topic all together. I have made my views known on the secular benefits of marriage as a recognized institution between a man and a woman.

A “try before you buy” culture. I don’t believe that there is anything wrong with that, nor do I think that marriage is some magic pill that will make people more committed.

This is where we differ because the result of “try before you buy” to the point of living together and having children is what causes the problems we have been discussing.

What benefits does marriage offer? Marriage as a social institution between a man and a woman should be clear. Until the last fifty years or so it was the primary social contract that protected the rights of all parties including and probably most importantly children. It was societies way to establish a family.

Countless studies have shown that children are better off in a stable two parent household. They are healthier, they have higher grades, they are happier, they are more secure, they have a smaller instance of drug and alcohol abuse, etc..

For women, divorce has led to a great increase in poverty, single, women suffer a larger percentage of domestic (intimate partner) violence, married women are generally healthier and have a longer life expectancy.

For men, married men make more then single men, single men are six times more likely to be incarcerated, married men live longer, married men have more stable work histories, they are more involved in their communities.

The evidence shows that we should be striving to promote marriage as an institution not tearing it down. A society that promotes living together without the commitment of marriage, having children and making it perfectly okay to simply abandon them and place all of the child rearing obligations on single mothers is not a recipe for a healthy and stable society. I am not saying that single women can’t raise a child, many do but you can’t ignore the fact that this is not the ideal and isn’t that what we should strive for? Men should not be able to father children and then so cavalierly walk away and say its not their problem. Promoting a society that doesn’t legitimize commitment in a strong fashion will only make this problem worse. We are already seeing it. Particularly among the poor in our country where the cycle of poverty continues through generations in a large part because men are not living up to their responsiblities.

Robert:

Of course it has happened. My point was that you ignored the millions killed by atheists in your desire to blame religion for all the harm in the world.

Atheism=/= religion. It’s a null position, what some atheists do is not reflective of atheism as it has no doctrine or rules. One cannot kill or “in the name of” atheism as it is just the personal lack of belief in deities. It’s intellectually honest to blame dictators and totalitarians and their authoritarian lackeys as that rather than as atheists.

When religious kill over faith it absolutely reflects religion as it’s their motivation for acting.

Yes it does. Because by any reasonable standard the baby conceived by the actions of others is innocent and the life of the innocent should be paramount. It is in every other context then to those who support choice. And the last time I checked, a pregnant women still had all her organs after she delivered her baby.

Maybe I’ll make it clearer: there’s no such thing as innocent and non-innocent people in a metaphysical and superstitious sense, just people period.

You are demanding that people give their bodies and lives against their will for your selected “innocent” persons. You have no conception of what the humane means, and you are not humane; the word monster is fits you better.

So when would an unborn child not be innocent?

They’re guilty of leeching off of, and endangering the health of the person they are growing in. If a person doesn’t want another living off their body then that person has the only right and only say in ending the situation, not third party dictators like you.

Hoverfrog,

That’s your solution? Make divorce so expensive and difficult that people will be forced to stay in loveless relationships.

Well that isn’t the only option. They could work on it and see if they could reconcile to save their marriage where they are both happy.

Really? Care to back that up with evidence?

Please refer to the links I provided earlier. Also, there are countless studies on the effects of single parent households that I mentioned before. do you have evidence that a “try it before you but it” attitude has helped society?

Easy solution. Get rid of marriage and you get rid of divorce. No divorce, no increased poverty, etc.

You aren’t serious are you? The effect of divorce that leads to poverty for single women does go away if they are single with children from a failed cohabitation relationship. The effect is the same.

You have failed to explain how a committed relationship without marriage is worse than a committed marriage. Instead you’ve gone on about the worst aspects of society and laid the blame at a lack of marriage. I would think that it marriage is but one social norm that has become out of fashion. Like religion.

The studies I have linked you to show that people who co-habitate without marriage have a break up rate that is two to three time higher then marriage.

R.T.,

Atheism=/= religion. It’s a null position, what some atheists do is not reflective of atheism as it has no doctrine or rules. One cannot kill or “in the name of” atheism as it is just the personal lack of belief in deities. It’s intellectually honest to blame dictators and totalitarians and their authoritarian lackeys as that rather than as atheists.

When religious kill over faith it absolutely reflects religion as it’s their motivation for acting.

I know all the arguments for atheists claiming that the actions of Stalin and others can’t be blamed on their atheism. I don’t buy them and they ignore the reality that these dictators were actively trying to develop and promote an atheist state.

You are demanding that people give their bodies and lives against their will for your selected “innocent” persons. You have no conception of what the humane means, and you are not humane; the word monster is fits you better.

They’re guilty of leeching off of, and endangering the health of the person they are growing in. If a person doesn’t want another living off their body then that person has the only right and only say in ending the situation, not third party dictators like you.

I must admit I have a hard time responding to something so inane. You call an unborn child a leech that isn’t innocent and then call me a monster. There is no sense continuing this discussion. Your sense of morality and reality is warped beyond belief.

To leech, though the difference obviously is lost on you.

R.T.,

Yeah, just overlook what kinds of people totalitarians, dictators, and authoritarians are so you can call some of them atheists.

I was not just calling them atheists, they were actively trying to set up an atheist state. Unlike Hitler who wasn’t trying to set up a painter’s state.

If you don’t know how to read properly how can you read you religious texts? Leeching is a verb which people can do in a myriad of ways to each other and I wrote that innocence doesn’t exist in a religious way, therefore no-one is your special version of “innocent” or “sinner” or whatever good/bad religious term you’d like to use.

I understood completely what you were saying. Here is the definition of leeching as a noun and a verb:

leech
1 ? ?/lit?/ Show Spelled[leech] Show IPA
–noun
1.
any bloodsucking or carnivorous aquatic or terrestrial worm of the class Hirudinea, certain freshwater species of which were formerly much used in medicine for bloodletting.
2.
a person who clings to another for personal gain, esp. without giving anything in return, and usually with the implication or effect of exhausting the other’s resources; parasite.
3.
Archaic . an instrument used for drawing blood.
–verb (used with object)
4.
to apply leeches to, so as to bleed.
5.
to cling to and feed upon or drain, as a leech: His relatives leeched him until his entire fortune was exhausted.
6.
Archaic . to cure; heal.
–verb (used without object)
7.
to hang on to a person in the manner of a leech: She leeched on to him for dear life.

Your arrogance precedes you.

And if you can’t understand the concept of innocence, even outside of a religious context then you truly are ignornant.

Hoverfrog,

Provide that apparent protection to partners and children when a couple live together for two years. “Problem” solved.

Interesting idea. In Texas we are a common law state. If you live with a person, hold yourself out to be married and agree between yourself that you are married, you are considered by law to be married without a ceremony or a license. If this happens you have the rights of a marriage and you must get divorced through the courts (there is no common law divorce).

What would be even better is to instill a sense of responsibility into people from a young age. Our culture is one of serial monogamy, the very worst aspects of monogamy without the benefits of polyamory. People are able to ignore their responsibilities. That’s the problem. Marriage isn’t a magic bullet to fix that. I’m not sure why you think it is.

I agree. Where I differ is that I believe that marriage as a societal institution prevents that from happening as often as a society that promotes cohabitation without that formal commitment. We have proof through the ages that a solid marriage and family life between a man and a woman in an intact home is good for society.

I was not just calling them atheists, they were actively trying to set up an atheist state. Unlike Hitler who wasn’t trying to set up a painter’s state.

So removing other authoritarian systems from being able to challenge, like religion, authoritarian/bureaucratic-communists therefor were creating an “atheist” state? *lol* They were making authoritarian states.

Again you should blame Leninists, Stalinists, and those those who came after modeled on them as what kinds of people they are.

Your arrogance precedes you.

Yeah, being called arrogant by a maternal-slaver mean very little.

And if you can’t understand the concept of innocence, even outside of a religious context then you truly are ignornant.

Again this your stumbling block. Your concept of innocence begins and ends at religion.

I’m beyond your magical concepts about innocence and sin and justice and punishment. Throughout our exchange I’ve been talking about innocence without religious frame.

It’d be nice if people like you could catch up. We’d have a finer world for it.