[Yswxomvy]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
What would civilization be like? Brutal? Peaceful? Would we be more advanced or less advanced?

Something tells me we would be more brutal and less advanced.

More brutal because we would recognise that we are all there are, there's nothing to aspire to.

Religion opened up mathematics, engineering, war - which lead to important inventions, the printing press, it even opened up our minds to imagine in that which doesn't exist. You claim we'd be more brutal without religion, but then state that Religion "opened up" war? What's more brutal than war, particularly as it was practiced in, say, Biblical times?

I don't think you thought this through very clearly...

[masaredera]

Elok:

Given that I prefer not to get tied up with your attempts at interpreting my statement, I will lay out the basis for my initial claim.

Religions, specifically organized sets of beliefs that claim to answer basic fundamental metaphysical questions and set down moral codes (as opposed to folklore and unorganized myths), all claim that they can do so because they have come to understand the fundamental truths of the universe. They make claims not only about purely human things like how families or tribes should function, but also claim to know how the universe came into existance and how the material world functions.

Disagreements and controversies about how human societies should organize themselves will always exist because which answers are best depend on the material conditons those societies find themselves in and their aims. The same is not true about supposed answers to fundamental universal things. The answer to "how did the world begin" should be the same no matter when and where you are.

One would think that after so long, even if different religious tradtions haven't been able to agree on how many people can be included in a marriage, they would at least have come up with a basic common answer to these universal questions. They haven't. Those that have sought answers not through faith but empirical observation and experimentation can disagree but eventually they do come up with single answers, and in far less time than five millenia.

If the answer to "is there a God, gods" is such a clear one, then people all around the world should have reached it, because that is a question whose answer should not be tied to anything material in the world. That reasonable and intelligent human beings throughout history haven't been able to come up with anything close to an answer should tell is that there is a problem with the question.

[Stengapsept]

Bullshit. People had plently of self-interested motives having nothing to do with metaphysical or moral quandries to create tools or methods to improve their basic material lives. The most crucial human discoveries were agriculture and animal husbandry, and those had far more to do with the fact people get hungry than praying to any deity. Religion, as opposed to mysticism or basic superstition, is a creation of civilization, not the cause of it. You say bullshit, yet I agree with you. I did not say religion was the cause of ALL discoveries.



I just don't interpret the Bible literally in believing the Earth is only 6,000 years old or that God created life itself. Yeah, because if you did that, it would make your belief in God troublesome. How convenient.



Frosty Boy, out of curiousity, which religions do you believe created mathematics, war, engineering. I must assume they weren't all a product of one ancient belief system. Similarly, if a Christian developed evolution, does that make evolution a Christian concept? Well i'm no historian, but I could assume easily that Christianity needing a way to mass print their bullshit, lead to the invention of the printing press. But don't assume I think that only Christianity could have lead to that discovery, I just think Christianity gave it a boost.



Why is it that "religious people" are all lumped as one? Hindus and Buddhists are religious, but they do not accept the concept of a singular sentient omnipotent creator 'God.' Many religions have lead to many discoveries. Which is kind of the discussion here.



As opposed to religious disagreements, which are somehow not? Actually they are. Haven't you noticed one religion changes slightly the further they are from each other?



As for Darwin himself, it was his love of God's creations that lead him out to learn about them. It was while he was doing that, that he made his discovery. Proving my point once again.

[bahrain41]

Your God, came before man, how did man come to know of this God and how did he interpret him and understand his law?

I'm just asking, since you don't follow the bible's story, so I'm curious what yours is.

[sportbos]

Originally posted by GePap
If the answer to "is there a God, gods" is such a clear one, then people all around the world should have reached it, because that is a question whose answer should not be tied to anything material in the world. That reasonable and intelligent human beings throughout history haven't been able to come up with anything close to an answer should tell is that there is a problem with the question. ...no, that does not follow, and I at least have never claimed it was a clear answer. It's a very tricky question, and even the simple way you phrased it implies a number of complicated sub-questions. Nor does it follow that the search for deity be unaffected by material variables, individual perspective and local trends the way everything else is. This is all flat assertions and puffery.

[cheapphenonline]

Originally posted by Blaupanzer
Both atheists and religious people feel sorry for the other because the lost do not know the truth. Of course, if either side gets turned loose they create concentration camps and burn at the stake those deemed to be incorrect. The odds that either side will respect the views of the other seem rather low in that light. Atheists don't burn those deemed to be incorrect (i.e. religious people). It's the other way around. The inquisition springs to mind for example

[gedsiz]

Originally posted by FrostyBoy
Well i'm no historian, but I could assume easily that Christianity needing a way to mass print their bullshit, lead to the invention of the printing press. But don't assume I think that only Christianity could have lead to that discovery, I just think Christianity gave it a boost. Well, you may say Christianity lead to printing press, but probably not in the way you'd expect.

Printing press and protestantism appear more or less at the same time.
And what makes protestantism unique at that time, is that it abolished the priest caste in religion.
Before that, the believers have to rely on the priests to tell them God's will. May I just remind you that the bible was forbidden to read for ordinary catholic believers until vatican 2. As a side note, I know some old catholic guy (70+), true believer who is still afraid of reading, and even having home a bible. His education about the bible being a book for the initiate is so strong, that still today he prefers to rely on the priest to tell him what is in there and how to understand it.

Protestantism introduced the 'democratic' access to God.
The printing press was certainly not desired by religion. Religion of that time was so abusive, that it lead to a reformed form of religion, and a will of people to look for themselves, learn for themselves in the topic of spirituality, as well as in the topic of simple knowledge.

Still today, even among the protestants - who should know better - while they are supposed to practise the 'check for yourself' in spirituality as well as in knowledge, some want to prevent the ordinary believer to check for himself, or to confront their beliefs or science. 'Here is how you should understand the bible, and here is what science should tell'.

Printing press, books, are the democratisation of knowledge. Knowledge about spirituality and science. At some time in history, one very unique form of religion allowed the ordinary believer to have access to that knowledge and even encouraged the discussion, study of the basics by everybody.
And once that pandora box was opened, the nightmare of religion: atheism wasn't that far away. Today, you see how religion tries to strike back by dictating how the bible should be interpreted, but that is a petty attempt to retake the control, to close the box.

Religion leading to printing press?
Well, I'd say: religious abuses leading to p***-off people, leading to reform and appeasement measures, leading to printing press. Ultimately leading to people seeing through religion bovine waste, leading to atheism.

But there is no way a true religion would want the believer - whose greatest virtue is to believe without questioning - to have access to knowledge, to books. Christianity, the church, because of her abuses had to give away ground on this, but I can guarantee that was against her will. See how she fought the reform, and how she put books, including the bible itself to the infamous index.

[AssinHT]

Originally posted by Traianvs
Now you're simply clouding the issue by asserting it's too complicated a question. Finding the fundamentals of life sure is a difficult question, but why then can religions be found all over the world with different answers?

The manner by which people search for that deity is affected by the environment, culture and other socio-economic factors indeed. But what I think Gepap meant is that the manner and material aspects of those different religions don't matter, because they're just the tools to search of the absolute answers. In the end the answer should be a universal one. However, reality shows us that every religion proclaims its own fundamental truths.

So why is that? Is one religion wrong, or are they all right perhaps? Are they all merely different manifestations of that truth, that 'God'? If so, then why do they hold different views on those most basic, fundamental things about life?

I believe this is simply because it's a socio-cultural construct. It's a philosophy (for example the Greek pre-socratici) with a spoonful of faith, which makes it internally a logic explanation. But, because it's man-made the explanation differs all over the world.

Simple enough. EDIT: Had to go get a shower before the hot water died, and posted hastily. More thought-out version:

Has it occurred to you that theology is necessarily subjective? You can't exactly rectally probe the Almighty and take measurements. And all subjective insights are necessarily colored by past experience and cultural upbringing. With that fairly major proviso, however, you'll find that most religious traditions are fairly similar once they mature past a certain point. There's a regular progression from vague pantheism to paganism to structured polytheism, and from polytheism to at least a functional monotheism. Even in the deliberately-primitive neo-pagan faiths like Wicca there's some guff to that effect.

And the end product is similar, especially in the more mystical strands; a Sufi, a Zen monk and a Russian starets will give you more or less the same advice on any matter. Now, that's probably because the mystical sects focus a lot on the psychosomatic stuff, interaction between bodily and mental discipline, which is more empirical than plain theological speculation. But it's still interesting IMO.

Exceptions include religions more inclined to the philosophical than the supernatural (Theravada Buddhism, probably others), and Confucianism, which was established with the express intent of imposing societal order, religious truth being basically irrelevant. Oh, and Scientology--for obvious reasons--and young religions that are still working things through.

Look at psychology: even today, there are several wildly distinct schools of thought in it. There are Behaviorists, Humanists, Psychoanalysts, Psychodynamics, Cognitive-Behaviorists, and a whole lot of others (asked my psych-prof mom for a list, was overwhelmed). And there are people who claim it's not a real science because it doesn't have precise formulae like physics or chemistry. The real reason for all the fuzz is that it's the study of something which can only be observed in the most indirect fashion, and different perspectives produce different results. Also some of those schools are closer to philosophies than sciences IMO, probably as a result of that indirectness and its partial overlap with the duties of religion and philosophy.

Now, unlike religion it's still quite young, and technological progress is making it possible to study the brain's workings more directly. The analogy is far from perfect, I admit.

[NanoGordeno]

Originally posted by Barnabas
And you don't think it takes a lot of faith to believe in Marx's predictions for the future of mankind? Commies have their own "end of times" and "paradise" faith based concepts.

The "predictions" of Marxism are based on scientific analysis and history.

[Knongargoapex]

I am speaking of Gutenberg's Printing Press, the one that revolutionized the world.

[drmarshallusa]

Marx's predictions aren't any worse than anyone elses.

[Apparpsmose]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Marx's predictions aren't any worse than anyone elses. No, a lot of other people's predictions actually came true, and not in a self-fulfilling prophecy way. Just off the top of my head, Churchill's "they had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor; they shall have war."

And now that I said that, somebody's going to dig up the quote and tell me it's apocryphal.

[opergolon]

You want non-easy predictions? How about Alan Turing's? Or do those not count either?

[veizKinquiz]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
Seriously Chegitz, it's based on hegelian dialectics, which is profoundly metaphysical.

Which of course does not discredit them - it only shows that metaphysics can be valid...

Hegel's dialectics are indeed metaphysical, because Hegel was an idealist philosopher. For him, the dialectic was the clash of ideas. Marxist dialectics, however, are based on the processes of the world: time, change, chaos, etc. Remember Marx's famous quote about standing Hegel on his head. One of the main thinkers of Chaos theory, Ilya Prigogene, in the 1970s credited Marxist dialectics as a precursor (by about 100 years).