Why are JUBbers so prejudiced against the religious/religion in general?

[Kulindahr]

Ironically, theists tend to be very good at "proving" the non-existence of all the gods they don't believe in.

Mere reason can dismiss most deities --there aren't many claimants that really qualify.

 

[NotHardUp1]

Although perennially disappointed by the gratuitous abuse of religion on JUB, I'm nonetheless very happy to live in an era in which both science and faith prosper in their respective domains.

Raised as a progressive Protestant surrounded by Fundamentalists, I never found it very hard to synthesize both values in my psyche. Faith is highly intuitive and not well suited (any longer) to persuasion by argument or even the tip of the sword. Those seeking often do find that faith fills the void. Those who don't, swim in a different ocean, simply put.

Science is exciting, engrossing, inspiring, and satisfying in its pursuit of causes and relationships, many attributes religion once provided, but no longer needs to.

For me, it seems a bit obvious that our race is having growing pains as we try to redefine our relationships with our mothers (religion), which is a metaphor that never occurred to me before. We like to look back and think there have always been a significant population of atheists and rationalists, but the truth is that population was actually embedded within religion for thousands of years because science and rationalism hadn't evolved far enough at that time.

In my experience, a healthy mix of the intuitive, the innate, the Jungian, is key to wholeness as a human. Although I have my own belief in an actual Creator and a perceived relationship with the Creation, I don't find it so important that everyone share that as I know it. I'm fine with pagan religions and mystics and even those who elevate philosophy or watered down Buddhist derivatives as religion. Their "faith" in those perspectives fills the need that is endemic to the vast majority of humanity.

For those outside the fold of religion, it is often comical that so much emphasis is placed on the conflicts arising from religion, all the while making strident war on religion. Conflict is conflict, and both evolutionists and authors alike understand that it is inherent in life forms, regardless of religion or its absence.

And, contrary to imputed neediness or fragility or insecurity, I'm perfectly happy to get to the end of my days and die and think or be no more if the nihilists are correct. My life will have been lived in a fulfilling way, valuing charity, aspiration, community, expectation of purpose and productivity, called to creativeness, accountability, humility, and the joy of singing together in ancient ritual connecting me with many generations past. I was born a bastard, so that connection, on so many levels, is something very important to me, even though many close to me find me "too independent."

I like that faith is at once very personal but very shared and connected. Science can also be that way, even though it is very objective -- it yet boils down to an individual's perspective of all those "truths" assembled and deployed.

As far as JUB's foment around it, I mark it down to anomaly, just as our most notorious troll obviously vacillates from German-like cerebralism to Neanderthal-like brutishness. It's a game, probably played by a mod or admin.

 

[kallipolis]

Sure it can. Start with the creation of the universe.

There's an irony here, for the scientist who presented the world with the single point, or big bang theory was also a Catholic priest.

http://www.thefullwiki.org/Abbe_Georges_Lemaitre

I quote:

Lemaître proposed what became known as the Big Bang theory of the origin of the Universe, which he called his 'hypothesis of the primeval atom

'.

 

[kallipolis]

Faith is highly intuitive and not well suited (any longer) to persuasion by argument or even the tip of the sword. Those seeking often do find that faith fills the void. Those who don't, swim in a different ocean, simply put.

Nicely, expressed.

I've learnt over many years of living that life is never black, and white...

....despite the wish of many, to wish it so.

 

[rareboy]

There is no tenet about atheism that precludes distaste for others' religious predilections because there are no tenets in atheism at all. Therefore, any atheist is a true atheist so long as he or she is convicted that there is no deity. Also see: no true Scotsman fallacy.

On the contrary, many atheists care very much, especially those that tend to view religion as harmful.

Religion seems to be universal, owing to the heuristic nature of human abstract thinking (i.e. we prefer gut feelings over logic) and there are more religions than stars, however equally arbitrary because Jesus didn't have the Internet to let everyone know he was the only one.

Hostility at least in the LGBT community would logically stem from the callousness many, or shall I say most, have faced from some religious people in our lives, not to mention the overall liberal tendencies owing to our strong presence in urban centers. So we are calloused against religion in general.

I might only suggest that these would be considered anti-theists versus aetheists. And I do believe that there is actually a distinction. We just tend to lump all the anti-theists with the aetheists.

 

[Harke the Boeotarch]

There's an irony here, for the scientist who presented the world with the single point, or big bang theory was also a Catholic priest.

http://www.thefullwiki.org/Abbe_Georges_Lemaitre

I quote:

'.

There's nothing ironic about this, education and science came mostly from religion for thousands of years.

For instance the universities that prominent atheists pride themselves on having attended or even work at were originally founded by the Roman Catholic Church.

 

[LeicsDom]

However, when the topic of religion comes up, I see so much hate and persecution. I curiously opened the Hawkins thread in CE&P and was quite disgusted
You'd think people that have experienced persecution in their own lives would be more open-minded and accepting of DIFFERENCE. I still don't get it after being a member and observer here for years.

The reason so many of us get so very upset and aggresive towards religious numbskulls is because they and their beliefs have been the cause of so much hate, murder and downright vileness over the centuries. It is beyond belief that so many idiots are stupid enough to buy into such destructive fairy tales

 

[Kahaih]

There's nothing ironic about this, education and science came mostly from religion for thousands of years.

For instance the universities that prominent atheists pride themselves on having attended or even work at were originally founded by the Roman Catholic Church.

Unholy shit! I never took you for the type to be so unbelievably naive. I am truly shocked – and, quite honesty, disappointed.

 

[kallipolis]

There's nothing ironic about this, education and science came mostly from religion for thousands of years.

For instance the universities that prominent atheists pride themselves on having attended or even work at were originally founded by the Roman Catholic Church.

The irony is in the attempt of an evangelical, anti theist to use science as a weapon against religious belief....while I acknowledge that most of the great scientists, over the centuries were also theists..and that the great learning institutions such as Notre Dame in Paris, Oxford, and Cambridge in England were originally church founded, and church operated universities.

 

[Alnitak]

I might only suggest that these would be considered anti-theists versus aetheists. And I do believe that there is actually a distinction. We just tend to lump all the anti-theists with the aetheists.

Draw a Venn diagram.

 

[Kahaih]

Any intelligent homosexual trying to survive in this hostile heterosexual-normative world knows that lies/false claims have to be made from time to time.

 

[ElmosToe]

 

[NotHardUp1]

It is beyond belief that so many idiots are stupid enough to buy into such destructive fairy tales

To the contrary, and to be both truthful and accurate, it is well within the RANGE of beliefs . . .

 

[zoltanspawn]

Brahma, not Vishnu -- Vishnu is the Preserver, balance to Shiva the Destroyer; Brahma is the Creator.

This is kind of like an elementary school summary of Hinduism. It gets at some truth, but vaguely, and has largely been discarded as a summary of Hindu religions. For many Vaishnavites, Vishnu is very much a creator, and how he achieves that creation may be accomplished through various means, popularly including the story I just related. In another account, Brahma creates the universe upon a lotus that blossoms from Vishnu's navel as he sleeps; Brahma is a minor god, hardly worshiped, and only an emanation of Vishnu. Shaktas and Saivites will offer other versions of creation, and ascribe the 'feat' of creation to their own namesakes.

Wish I could remember which novel it was.... but I read a great sci-fi novel recently which was really an argument that the proposition that any species that makes it to the stars will be peaceful is inherently flawed, because evolution requires competition, and intelligence turned to competition, given the nature of Nature, will always include not merely a capacity for but a tendency to violence. The arguments were very similar to ones I've read that "liberal" and "conservative" are two aspects of humanity that we need to survive, each for a different aspect of survival. At any rate, one aspect of the argument was that any species without the capacity for violence will never achieve civilization because it will never be able to rise above merely surviving against predators; thus every intelligent species will have a built-in animosity to the "other", and the only way to achieve regarding all members of one's species as not-other is to encounter an exterior enemy that can be so regarded.

I used to think this was the case, but then I considered the bonobo. While the chimps (our closest relatives) of the Gombe conduct warfare on their neighbors and eat their own children, the bonobos are busy making love and soothing hurt feelings.

 

[LeicsDom]

To the contrary, and to be both truthful and accurate, it is well within the RANGE of beliefs . . .

No organised relgion is either truthful or accurate

 

[ElmosToe]

^either? or neither? Is that an opinion or have you extensively studied every organized religion to actually present facts to back that up?

Just wondering.

 

[NotHardUp1]

No organised relgion is either truthful or accurate

Right. Got it. They're all shite and you're the recognized authority. Say n'more.

And, true to form you ignored the subject of "truthful and accurate" in my post, which obviously wasn't religion.