Do you understand Faith/religion/spirituality? (myths, Catholic, Jews, Christians)

[sanspeur]

Originally Posted by raison_d'etre

Don't like it when I use logic, reason, FACTS? I'm not your average religious supporter. I don't quote religious text or prophecies. I don't quote the bible or come up with terms that are meaningless or made up.

Yes, facts and logic are expected, but using facts that have no bearing at all on the discussion is of no use at all...What do the total number of deaths have to do with the negative or positive aspects of faith, religion or spirituality?
Sorry, but I refuse to join you on your off topic tangent.

[raison_d'etre]

Originally Posted by sanspeur

Yes, facts and logic are expected, but using facts that have no bearing at all on the discussion is of no use at all...What do the total number of deaths have to do with the negative or positive aspects of faith, religion or spirituality?
Sorry, but I refuse to join you on your off topic tangent.

I was merely pointing out one part of that site that was misleading. People associate religion with death(murder, neglect, etc.) I could point out many negative things that have nothing to do with religion, and yet we would accept them without the same judgment and standard we hold religion to.

What do you expect to happen when you hold religion up on some podium? It's not grand, it isn't rainbows, and smiles all the time. There are negative sides to it. Same goes for any social group. Name one social group that has not one negative attribute...

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Originally Posted by raison_d'etre

My question is this: How is believing in things religious/spiritual bad if it gives a person hope?

It is not, per se, a problem in and of itself. However the problems come from the fact it does not stop there.

Firstly a lot of these people are not happy simply believing. They can not be happy until every one else believes it too. Whether we are talking about people going from door to door selling these ideas, the people trying to enact blasphemy laws in our world today, or the people turning to violence.... the world is full of people who do not keep personal faith personal and want to make it very much part of us too.

Secondly there are those who take their faith into our halls of power, education and science and attempt to dictate policy based on their beliefs. Many point to scripture and their fantasies rather than attempting to translate their religiously motivated desires into arguments amenable to discourse and reason. There are few areas of our discourse not affected by such people.

So if it were merely a case of "Whats wrong with people having personal faith" then you would be right... this is barely a problem. Alas however personal faith is often not personal and affects others... often in truly awful ways. I think often of the beautiful little girl who died from a perfectly treatable form of diabetes purely because their parents thought the treatment for such a condition to be an offense to their god. That is a lot more than personal faith! That is using ones faith to justify watching another human being slowly die of something they could very easily be treated for.

Originally Posted by raison_d'etre

Guess what? Those people would do bad and evil things with or without religion.

The case of that little girl above likely shows that to be false. I have NO doubt the parents in question were good in their hearts and their decision was bourne not of evil, but of love.

They likely thought what they were doing was the best thing for their daughter. The issue is religion did not simply allow bad people to do bad things here. No, it did something more insidious than that. It took a genuine powerful love, one of the most powerful loves our species knows... the parental love of a child.... and warped it into what ended in a manslaughter charge. That child died a slow unpleasant death, and I have little doubt her parents loved her every moment of it.

The old saying going around holds true. Good people will do good things. Bad people will do bad things. To get good people to do bad things however, use religion.

[Nozzferrahhtoo]

Originally Posted by raison_d'etre

You are still looking at the good and bad and one whole thing. They are two very different things that share certain aspects. Yes there have been many cases of bad things done in the name of religion and spirituality. However, there has been more good done in the name.

Doing something "in the name" of something and doing something "because" of something are vastly different things. I am aware of... as you say.... many good and bad things done in the "name" of religion but these do not interest me. People often do things they would do any way and then retrospectively assign credit to something, like religion, which had nothing to do with it.

No, the important question to answer is whether there are things done specifically BECAUSE of something. Take the "good" things done in the name of religion for example. Can you name a single good thing said, or done, in the name of religion that is not just as doable... or even has not been done... entirely in it's abscence? In other words can we find a causal link between such things that requires religion at all?

The answer is no. Even without religion people are charitable (in fact the more secular a country these days the more charity it gives per capita it has been found), open hospices and shelters for children, the needy or the abused, go into war zones or poverty areas and do good works.... and much more. Religion clearly therefore is not required at all.

However is the opposite true? I think we find no. There genuinely is bad effects of religion that are not just things done in the name of religion, but specifically caused by religion. We can list many of these things... the story above of the warping of parental love into a situation where the loving parents willingly watched their child die a slow painful death was directly religiously motivated. I can list many more.

So if no good required religion then religion is superfluous to requirements. If something is superfluous to requirements then even if that something does only ONE bad thing then it heads into negative equity of usefulness. I find that no good has ever been done or is being done that requires religion, yet much bad. I therefore take religion as a whole, not just on individual events I focus on to fulfil a bias, to be harmful, useless and worthy of our ire.

[jackmccullough]

Originally Posted by raison_d'etre

Don't like it when I use logic, reason, FACTS?

I am wholeheartedly in favor of this.

Just give us a heads-up when you're ready to start.

[KCfromNC]

Originally Posted by raison_d'etre

You are still looking at the good and bad and one whole thing. They are two very different things that share certain aspects. Yes there have been many cases of bad things done in the name of religion and spirituality. However, there has been more good done in the name. You have to look at both sides here very carefully. Does the good outweigh the bad in the current time. Yes it does.

This is what many scientists do with technology and medical advancements. They weigh the good and bad. If the Good aka benefits outweighs the bad then they push forward. They do this even if it is only slightly better. This is most often done with medicine. The FDA approves medicine as long as it even slightly works better than a placebo...

And in the mean time, they look for improvements to reduce the bad and emphasize the good. They don't just say "well, it works in some limited cases so we can't question it at all". Likewise, we can acknowledge that religion helps some people while pointing out that treating it as a fact and writing it into law or using it justify killing gay people and witches is wrong.

[KCfromNC]

Originally Posted by raison_d'etre

Where is the outcry for deaths caused by conventional medicine?

You can't possibly question medicine if you want to remain consistent. Using your own argument, the net benefit of modern medicine is overwhelmingly positive and makes many people feel better, therefore you have to ignore the negatives and just let people believe in it. That's what you've been telling us about religion, so no fair changing the rules when your talking about something which isn't your pet hobby horse.

[peppermint]

Originally Posted by raison_d'etre

I found this very interesting. So-Called “Evangelical” Young People More Accepting of Homosexuality

This as well...PublicEye.org - The Website of Political Research Associates (http://www.publiceye.org/magazine/v24n1/younger-evangelicals-where-wil-whey.html - broken link)

I'm not sure why you posted this. The first is propaganda. The kind that used to be passed out in my SS classes to say "we have to fight harder; we're losing kids". It's the crap that I taught to my students as a teacher in Christian schools. It really doesn't support your POV.

The second says:

Recently polled younger evangelicals seem more conservative in their theological positions than those polled in the 1980s.1 At the same time they are more inclined than their parents to support social justice efforts such as environmental stewardship, anti-poverty programs, or HIV/AIDS treatment. While they mostly believe that homosexuality is a sin, at least some of them support employment and housing rights for LGBTQ people.

Younger evangelicals are emphatic about being “prolife,” with a 2008 poll showing two thirds believing abortion should be illegal in all, or most, circumstances. This is about the same percentage as their older counterparts.

I did get, toward the end, that Evangelical youth are not a homogeneous group, which is great, but they are very clear in the article that research is incomplete and difficult to attain.

A few of my former students have taken a more liberal road in their faith, embracing the LBGT community, while others have gone on to Liberty University in VA. I am grateful that some young kids are waking up to the garbage they are taught. I'm ashamed that I was part of that for a while, but because I was, I can emphatically tell you that it is still taught, and the establishment is pushing it on kids with zeal. It is hammered into us adults by older adults that "we are losing our youth and children", and we slam the kids with all sorts of teaching and literature. That some kids reject it is expected and I am thankful. Far too many still practice it.

One of my dearest friends is a lifelong atheist, and he doesn't understand radical religion at all. He doesn't understand the motivations of people who elect the George W. Bushs and Rick Perrys of the world. I think there are a lot of people who don't understand it. My friend believes the rational, religiously uninpassioned will stop the zealots. A look at current events and the political atmosphere (i.e. MS's proposed amendment to their state constitution) should indicate that he's mistaken, but he fails to give the zealots the respect they deserve.

I am not much older than you are, a few years. I'm relatively fresh out of the mines, a few years. I'm not going to say that you are 100% wrong about youth changing their views. I desperately wish they would, but I do believe you, like my friend, underestimate the breadth and depth of indoctrination. This isn't an issue we're likely to agree on as there are no numbers to support either position. As a born and raised Southerner with most of my family and friends deeply entrenched in Evangelicalism (not to mention the zealots I worked with in the north as a teacher or out west as a missionary), I can assure you that change is not coming as quickly as many of us would like. In some sects, it's not coming at all.

[raison_d'etre]

Originally Posted by Nozzferrahhtoo

It is not, per se, a problem in and of itself. However the problems come from the fact it does not stop there.

Firstly a lot of these people are not happy simply believing. They can not be happy until every one else believes it too. Whether we are talking about people going from door to door selling these ideas, the people trying to enact blasphemy laws in our world today, or the people turning to violence.... the world is full of people who do not keep personal faith personal and want to make it very much part of us too.

Let me ask you something. If you thought you knew of this wonderful thing that brought you joy, would you not want to share it with others? Most people would. This applies only to those people that go out teaching their beliefs with love and compassion, not hate and fear. There are more people spreading the love joy version, but the fear and hate spreaders are the loudest, thus we tend to see them as the majority. I work in a public place, I see it all day long. It's there, you just have to look for it.

Secondly there are those who take their faith into our halls of power, education and science and attempt to dictate policy based on their beliefs. Many point to scripture and their fantasies rather than attempting to translate their religiously motivated desires into arguments amenable to discourse and reason. There are few areas of our discourse not affected by such people.

And I think people who do this are wrong. But again it is not the majority. You see the loudest and biggest ones doing this, not the majority of small churches and religions. Therefore, go after those that wish to force their religious ideals on others, but only go after them, not the whole community of religion. If group A is trying to pass some religious Law and group B has nothing to do with it, why attack both group A and B? It makes for a bad argument, makes no progress in fighting the real issue, and is not logical.

So if it were merely a case of "Whats wrong with people having personal faith" then you would be right... this is barely a problem. Alas however personal faith is often not personal and affects others... often in truly awful ways. I think often of the beautiful little girl who died from a perfectly treatable form of diabetes purely because their parents thought the treatment for such a condition to be an offense to their god. That is a lot more than personal faith! That is using ones faith to justify watching another human being slowly die of something they could very easily be treated for.

Again, not as common as you portray it to be. Considering the amount of religious and spiritual people out there compared to the occurrence of this type of thing, it really doesn't happen that often. Not saying it isn't a bad thing, it's terrible and the parents should be punished for it. I firmly believe that no child should be able to be denied medical treatment because of religious preference. The Government needs to step in before the children die, not after. The whole respecting religious beliefs should not apply when it could result in someones death.

The case of that little girl above likely shows that to be false. I have NO doubt the parents in question were good in their hearts and their decision was bourne not of evil, but of love.

They likely thought what they were doing was the best thing for their daughter. The issue is religion did not simply allow bad people to do bad things here. No, it did something more insidious than that. It took a genuine powerful love, one of the most powerful loves our species knows... the parental love of a child.... and warped it into what ended in a manslaughter charge. That child died a slow unpleasant death, and I have little doubt her parents loved her every moment of it.

I do see your point, but again this is rare if you consider the numbers. Still sad, and I believe the Laws need to be changed to protect children before this happens. I can't help but think the government and hospital are partially responsible for this child's death. They knew she would die without treatment, but had to respect the wishes of her parents. What about the child's wishes?

The old saying going around holds true. Good people will do good things. Bad people will do bad things. To get good people to do bad things however, use religion.

To get good people to do bad things does not only require religion. Nationalism, money, property, love, normally rational people will do some pretty stupid things if they have the right motivation.

You really have to consider the numbers here. If this was happening to say 25%+ of religious families, then yes I would say that it is bad. But it is not that common. We only think it is common because the media gives it a lot of attention. The louder something is said the bigger is seems. The media, politicians, and protesters know this all too well. You want to get a point across, you don't use the quiet method to spread it, you go loud.

[peppermint]

One of the most frustrating things about your posts, raison, is your use of figures with absolutely no support. I can't take you seriously when you have no data to back up what you say. You just make it up. You really, really shouldn't do that. It's misleading to those seeking real information, and it makes you look bad.