[quote name='gargus']Religion as a blanket whole is a negative in the long run because it prevents us from moving forward and being able to evolve our minds (in a manner of speaking) because it puts restraints on people, it holds them to old ideas and old ways and old thinking. Religion certainly isnt a cancer so to speak, but it definitely has held back our advancement hundreds of years and still continues to this day. For instance we could have had womens lib in the 1700s if we didnt have religion because religion dictated women serve their husband, be submissive to him and such. Infact the bible rarely spoke of women in a good light at all. Without it we could have reached a point of sex based equality along time ago.
Not to mention in my experince the real religious people are the most closed minded and judgemental people Ive ever seen. The most accepting of others, the most good natured and open minded people Ive ever met were all non religious. They are also the most hypocritical people around because when they do something its somehow ok, but they judge others and tell them they are wrong because the bible says so. Look at all the times such as stem cell research we could have saved countless lives with but was witheld because of alot of religious people against it. Or the other dozens of times progress was held up in the name of religion.
Way to many people live by a religion that was created during a time when there was no law, no way of controlling people and during incredibly superstitious times as well. Even just a few hundred years ago we knew for a fact the earth was flat, 500 years ago it was known fact illness was caused by tiny frogs in our stomachs and just a few hundred years ago in this country holy and upright christians citizens would burn their nextdoor neighbor alive or torture them to death because they were a witch. Religion was birthed in a period of time where mankind as a whole new nothing, was afraid of the woods at night, believed in outright ludicrious stuff and had no way of controlling its people in general. So how do you keep people in line that are superstitious and afraid? You tell them "a man youll never meet and no one has ever met will be good to you AFTER you die if you will obey these laws we give you" and the best way to make people remember that stuff is by giving it to them in small bite sized verses from interesting stories in a book. If the bible didnt have stories it never would have caught on simply because people like telling stories, especially back then when its all they had for entertainment.
Religion is more or less a placebo. Its kind of like back in the day if a person was sick and had problems a dr couldnt figure out or cure they would give that person a placebo. After taking that placebo the person would physically and mentally feel so much better, thank the dr and think it was a miracle in a pill because it fixed what was wrong with them when all that placebo had in it was sugar. Yup sugar pills cured millions of peoples physical problems because it mentally made the person believe they were being cured. Religion is the same way, all those people who claim to have felt the touch of god or whatever have only convinced themselves they have because they so badly want to believe it.
Go over in the middle east and people will kill eachother simply for having a different religion. Hell they dont even look different or anything. Christianity in america is dominant and alot of times if your not a christian then "your a bad person going to hell" or god forbid a muslim.[/QUOTE]
I knew it was only a matter of time until you found this thread. And you are still spewing things that I brought up in your last thread about religion, but you just ignored. I won't even waste my time this time.
[quote name='Clak']Unfortunately most parents don't seem to do that, they just pass their religion and beliefs down to their kids, then when the kids are grown they just regurgitate their parents beliefs more or less. I don't know what happened to me personally, why I rejected all that. Probably goes back to my curiosity of how things function, I could never accept that something just was, I needed to know how and why.[/QUOTE]
True, there are people who just blindly follow what their families believed. But there are a good number of people who reject what they were taught and turn to another religion or reject religion altogether. It happens both ways.
However, I believe the Bible addresses the people who simply believe because their families do, those type. In the book of James, it talks about faith that doesn't show fruit is dead faith, it doesn't really exist. He says that simply believing the right things doesn't matter, that even demons know who Jesus is, and they shudder. James says that our faith is to be lived out. I call those people Christian Atheists, people who believe in God, but live their lives as if they don't. I'm reading a book about it right now, called "Christian Atheist" by Craig Groeschel. Pretty good read so far.
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