Religion is Evil

Philosophy Forums Society, Government, and Economics
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If you believe in an imaginary friend, and you are over the age of 5, then you are evil. And by “evil” I mean you are unthoughtful, pathological, unconscious, uncurious, do not value truth, very confused, and are effectively the single biggest problem facing humanity.

Look at all the problems in the world. How did they get there, what is their root cause(s)? You can point a finger clearly at religion.

Religion de-values the world in favor of “God” and “the afterlife”, two nonsensical ideas that any high school student with a basic understanding of social anthropology and an introductory history of philosophy course knows don’t make any sense at all. Maybe you never got an education, in which case I pity you, but you are still evil.

The good news is that you can learn to become non-evil, even someday you can become good. How do you do it? You need to break free from your self-imposed madness of “belief”.

Start asking yourself questions about your religious ideas and feelings… what are they really? From where do they come, what is your real justification for thinking they are what you think they are? Are you perhaps just repeating what others told you? Do you let these religious constructs force you to think and feel things you otherwise wouldn’t or some part of you knows is wrong?

Plenty of people start out as religious because their parents raised them this way, and as a child you just mindlessly absorb whatever you are told, especially if what youre told comes from your family and community of “church goers”… but then people start asking questions as they grow up, they become curious, freethinking, honest, passionate, desirous of truth and desirous to be better, to not be a little lemming following the herd… is that you? Which are you, the lemming, or the free thinker?

Many people break free from insane religious nonsense beliefs. You can too. Trust me, you really can. But you need to state clearly your values first, and trust in yourself to work through problems from start to finish. If you are an adult and you are still religious (only children are justified in believing in religions), this simply means you never learned how to trust yourself. You should really prioritize not being evil, because humanity just can’t handle that much more evil at this point.

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In an isolated sub-150 or so group, religion is unnecessary.

In a sub-150 group, in competition with other similar groups, religion is an advantage.

In a competitive plus-150 group, religion is a necessity.

The above are true I believe for pre-globalised, largely pre-scientific era societies. The ‘evil’ is kinda a non-issue. It’s more a question of utility.

At base a (competitive) religion is a platform from which to make motivational statements, based on emotive foundations to provoke specific social behaviour. Basically the “because I say so” parental gambit writ large.

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In the human past, before science and philosophy and evolved subjectivity to fuller ranges of self-consciousness, and before the full textual history of thought, research, literature, all available at our fingertips thanks to advancing technologies, yes maybe.

Maybe when humans were basically still dumb apes in the wild, we needed massive mythical constructs with which to culturally and emotionally bind to each other and establish norms and expectations of meaning. Maybe.

But we don’t need it anymore.

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You’re assuming though that we aren’t still dumb apes in the wild. Religion is intuitive, game theory, its more logical younger brother, is wildly unintuitive.

Jesus says “turn the other cheek”, game theorist says “yer wanna play a tit-for-two-tats strategy”.

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Right now in 2016 humanity has the clear potential to be more than a dumb ape in the wild. You’re right that many people are still those apes, I get that. But we’re at a point where a sizeable and increasing number of people are “waking up” to the delusional and harmful nature of religious belief.

We can split the atom, send probes to distant planets, program our own DNA, control wheelchairs with just our thoughts, we have huge accumulated knowledge about biology, chemistry, physics, math, sociology, psychology, astronomy, history, philosophy, and on and on and on… We are evolving out of stupid superstitious false mythological need.

I want to push the best in humanity forward and create a standing wave of highest values so that the most people possible get absorbed up in that swell. We need to take a stand against religion, simply because it is NOT necessary anymore. It is a remainder, a relic, an atavism, and to be frank, an embarrassment to our species.

Here’s the kind of thinking that religion promotes and requires:

-in group vs out group
-believing things without evidence
-denying what doesn’t fit into the given paradigm
-accepting what you’re told without question
-judging others simply for being different than you

Yeah, we can do without that bullshit now.

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Preaching to the choir here :smiley: . Let’s go to war. We got the guns but they got the numbers, and the motivation, and the suicide option, and the overkill, and the discipline, and the whole unquestioning obeying of orders schtick…

There’s a gardener. Plants, rains, harvests etc. Gets tired of his precarious lifestyle. Builds a greenhouse, fits a sprinkler system. Water at will, everything is rosey. Starts saying “Rain is evil.”

No religion is not an option. Different religion sure. Socially, we’ve co-evolved.

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Religion will eventually phase out. Yeah that might not be for another 500 years, but still.

We should not “go to war” with religion, that would only make it stronger. What we need to do is take clear stances, uphold high values without compromise, and state plainly the truths of the matter. Over time religion will keep diminishing, it is demising here in the US, and you can see that as this happens there are reactionary responses to this fact (e.g. Trump) who want to cling to the past that is dying…

Just do your best to ignore those reactionaries. They are just doing what history is programing them to do, to fight for what is already dying, to make sure the lesser values are completely purged from the future.

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Btw. This is how we look to theists right now.

We’re not speaking the same language.

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Good.

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The many different and unique justifications for the many different, unique and justified religions:

Jehova’s Witness believe because someone told them to.

Catholics believe because someone told them to.

Sunni Muslims believe because someone told them to.

Shi’ite Muslims believe because someone told them to.

Baptists believe because someone told them to.

Hindus believe because someone told them to.

Evangelicals believe because someone told them to.

Mormons believe because someone told them to.

Greek Orthodox believe because someone told them to.

Russian Orthodox believe because someone told them to.

Sufis believe because someone told them to.

Buddhists believe because someone told them to.

Taoists believe because someone told them to.

Pagans believe because someone told them to.

Jews believe because someone told them to.

:open_mouth:

Wow, how fascinating. The unique and justified perspective of every religion!

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Yeah, but as far as they’re concerned, you gonna burn son.

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Religion is Evil, where “evil” means something completely different from what anybody else would mean when using the word.

You find that a lot when atheists and hard leftists, who ultimately don’t think there is such a thing as right and wrong, want to wax histrionic by calling things they don’t like ‘evil’ or ‘immoral’. Your typical leftist, obsessed with powerful rhetoric, will see that there is great power in those words, even if their classic meanings are forever out of reach to a nihilistic anti-reality world view.

You could also point a finger at “greed” or “people” or “men” or “money” or “territory” or “scarcity” or “racism” or any of a dozen other things any given fake-academic wants to write a screed about.

Judaism doesn’t, it doesn’t even have an afterlife reward.

They make perfect sense to me. In fact, I’ll bet any sum that you’re not nearly as qualified to discuss them as I am. The fact that you dismiss these concepts so easily makes that clear. YOU think concepts like theism and an afterlife are stupid, so you blame them for things. This is standard progressive behavior- blame things you don’t know anything about because a liberal studies major who also doesn’t know anything about them told you to. After all, the wrong kind of people practice religion, so it is safe to condemn.

Neither of those things cover the relevant concepts. If you think God doesn’t exist or doesn’t make sense because of something you heard in a ‘basic social anthropology course’, then that certainly explains your outlook, but also makes it obvious that you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. Having taken and tutored introductory to philosophy courses, and having a B.A. in philosophy, I can tell you that you’re wrong about that too. Why would ‘the afterlife isn’t real’ or ‘There isn’t a God’ be covered in an introductory course about philosophy, when both positions are controversial, and not central to most of the central figures in philosophy? Only bullshit fields like ‘social anthropology’ presume to step so far outside their actual field of knowledge to make definitive pronouncements on things they know nothing about. You’d probably get an earful of ‘God doesn’t exist’ in a women’s studies major for the same reason.

I’ve done that, and like many philosophers of religion, I’m content that my theism is rational, moral, and provides a superior framework to understanding philosophy than the alternatives. It’s certainly superior to this fit you’re throwing.

You mean like an atheist youtuber? You mean like Richard Dawkins? Yeah, I think some religious believers probably do that. I think most people do that period when it comes to philosophical issues. But to pretend that religious people are ‘just repeating what others told them’ any more than their critics at this stage in the game is manifestly false. Any appearance of intellectual superiority in skepticism was just that- an appearance, and that appearance has long since vanished. Maybe if it was 1991, and it was hard to find examples of atheists/skeptics being retarded, you could sell this “belief is intellectual inferiority” chest-thump, but not now.

Plenty of atheists/skeptics/capitalists/socialists/conservatives/liberals/whatevers start that way too. In fact, virtually everybody starts off believing some stuff because they absorbed what parents told them.

I think it’s weird that you’d try to accuse people of having beliefs for the wrong reason at the end of a post that is trying to persuade people to change their minds by calling them terrible, evil human beings that should be ashamed of themselves- and not actually making any sort of argument.

Is a person who believes what they do because their parents told them to really any worse off than a person who believes what they do because some stranger on the internet made them feel bad? I laugh at you both because I actually do philosophy, but I do wonder at how one thinks itself superior.

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I’m sorry to see that you’re defending mindless beliefs that have no basis in reality, no evidence whatsoever, and only serve to degrade humanity and keep consciousness and emotion stunted at the animal level.

Do you seriously think religion will last? Try to look at the future, and assume a positive progression for the human species, however you want to define ‘positive progression’… can you see a place for religion in there? I can’t.

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Trying to make people feel bad for what they believe isn’t an argument. It is a tactic to compel belief out of proportion to the evidence, which is the thing you pretended to condemn in your opening post. And it’s not a tactic that will work on me in particular for a couple of reasons. If you don’t have an argument, you don’t have any reason to speak to me.

What do our fantasies about what the future might be like have to do with anything? If you’re going to begin some attack on religion there, you have nothing.

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I am simply speaking truths here. I am not responsible for how that makes you or anyone else feel.

You may downgrade your ability to think about the future as mere “fantasy”, but again, that is not my responsibility.

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Or: If you think that God exists because you are able to concoct philosophical arguments that “demonstrate” this, then perhaps you don’t know what the fuck you are talking about. Either that or His existence is predicated precisely on the manner in which you define the meaning of the words that you use in your argument.

And that’s before we get to all of the other Gods; or to theodicy; or to reconciling an omniscient God with the capacity of mere mortals to choose Gods freely.

On the other hand, arguments like this don’t make the Gods that many believe in any more substantial. On the other hand, I’m sure there are folks who take courses such as this who profess a belief in one or another God. Just as I am sure there are courses in college that the true believers [religious or secular] flock to in order to sustain their own particular prejudices. Indeed, there are entire universities that revolve around one or another religious denomination. And I’m sure that some have courses in or around the field of “social anthropology”.

As for the relationship between God and philosophy, if there be an actual God and if He were to make that known [re say the Second Coming of Christ or Mohammed], what would it then mean – for all practical purposes – to study philosophy?

Religion in my view is just one more embodiment of dasein and conflicting goods. It is neither good nor evil. It is an existential contraption that each of us respond to subjectively; and we either are or are not able to reconfigure God into something more than just that which we believe or think we know about in “in our head”.

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No, you’re speaking assertions that you imagine to be truths based (one hopes) on some degree of evidence which has not been presented here. Defending your seemingly groundless assertions merely by proclaiming that they are The Truth is another stereotyped tactic of the people you are condemning. If you’re trying to persuade me that you didn’t know your post was an attempt to shame and manipulate people out of their beliefs, then I just have to wonder why you want me to think you’re a moron.

Anyway, it’s obvious all you have is bluster and no actual ability to defend anything you’ve claimed here. I just wanted to make sure that was clear to everyone.

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I’m not interested in trying to persuade you.

Iam, yes it is an existential construct to which subjectivity responds. That is a succinct way of putting it. And yet my argument still stands, considering the definition of “evil” that I provided in my OP. Do you disagree?

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Hey Ucc, long time no see. And Wyrm, I told you so. #-o

So anyway, you guys wanna go flapping your gums uselessly for a couple more pages…? Or just agree to disagree and walk away…?

Still, it’s been a couple years since I did this so what the hell.

Ucc, however much you bang on about ‘gee-whizz I’ve got a degree you know’, that doesn’t make a theist stance right. There is no definitive proof of god. Not in the way that there is definitive proof of burgers.

Wyrm, however much you bang on about religion being evil, and useless etc. that doesn’t make you right either. You are right to be outraged by religious driven conflict and killing. Probably Ucc is too. But organized religion is also largely responsible for the world we see around us, the giant cities, nation’s and some very nice buildings. Without religion we’d still be living in smallish isolated groups killing our neighbors because we couldn’t afford to trust them. And also, there is no definitive proof of ungod.

The only advantage theists have over atheists is theists have had a fair few more centuries of heaping sandbags up around their position, conceptually speaking. They have a long list of bored monks who wrote books, a whole bunch of philosophic history etc. Atheists have a few spotty podcasters and Richard bloody Dawkins, who should have stuck to what he was good at, evolution.

Me and Ucc, way back, have written hundreds if not thousands of words at each other. He hasn’t altered my stance on the whole religion bit one iota. Neither did my verbiage alter his. I can’t, he can’t, you can’t. Because that isn’t the way it works.

Those cultist deprogramming interventions, family pays some guys to go kidnap their son/daughter, and deprogram them at home, with a bunch of anti-religious argument and propaganda. After X days of shouting and crying, ex-cultist son daughter tearfully re-embraces a more secular pov. But ex-cultist did not change their minds because of cool logical, fallacy-free argument… they reconverted to a more conventional state of mind because of the intense emotional pressure generated by their families and the big shouty authority figures they’d put on a podium as a focus.

And that’s the way it works.

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If you were Wyrm, I’d call that a pretty huge bait and switch. Wyrm wasn’t saying that theism happens to be incorrect. He was saying that it was utterly mindless, without any degree of evidence, and that only stupid people who lack basic competency in a few key areas could possibly believe such a thing. That’s not true, and that can be refuted with a mere gesture towards any number of philosophy of religion departments and communities. I have no problem with somebody who sees theism as one of many positions they don’t happen to agree with. But to claim it has some special lack of intellectualism compared to other ideologies is just idiocy.

Of course. But when is religion just the scapegoat? Human behavior is pretty complex that way. We already see a post-religious progressivism starting to blame ‘toxic masculinity’ for all the same things they used to blame on religion. So were the people blaming religion wrong the whole time? Are the people blaming masculinity wrong now? Or is it all just a bunch of ideologically tactical shit-talking from people who will say literally anything to move society in a direction the prefer? I know what I think.

Yes. I’ve been in a thousand arguments just like this one. That is not an exaggeration. They follow a pattern. Sooner or later the same pattern repeated is going to lose impact. Wyld the internet atheist makes an outlandish claim about religion. I ask him to defend said claim. He calls me stupid and bad for daring to disagree. I brush that off. His next move is to try to bait me into defending a bunch of claims I haven’t made, so that he doesn’t have to defend his- he’ll insist that everybody else has a burden of proof in this thread he created about his claims. I’ll refuse, he’ll consider his position that ‘there is no evidence for religious claims’ to be defended by virtue of the fact that he successfully avoided having to defend it. That’s what happens when an internet atheist who has nothing but bluster to back them makes grandiose claims about a field they haven’t studied.

YOU aren’t like that, but that is the way of the broader debate these days.

Right, because the vast majority of people aren’t able to discern bad arguments from good ones with a degree of clarity sufficient to compel them.