Humanity=Hopeless without God

Post Reply New Topic

Some people need religion to cope with the world, and I'm much inclined to respect their need and let them have their beliefs and religion, as long as it is personal, not infringing upon the freedoms and rights of others.

I believe in what Nietzsche, that at some point humanity will get to the point that they don't need to worry about some possibly imagined guy in the sky who threatens to punish them if they do the wrong thing, and instead people are good to each other because its the right thing to do instead of out of fear.

Good question. Religion's existed for thousands of years, in many forms. What were the purposes in setting up these religions? To explain the unknowns which science could not determine at that time? Some sort of magic? Almost everyone had religious beliefs in some form or other, all states had religions. People feared the unpredictable and unknown, and felt that it was due to the actions of some supreme and all-knowing force.

I think that as the general belief patterns have become more questioning of religion, more people have left religion. But there will always be those who continue religion or even convert to it. Have you ever heard of kids with atheist parents converting to religion?
Religion is often a coping mechanism which guides people through life. I think that people should be presented with the science, and given the choice of whether or not they want to believe or not.

I'll quote Freeman Dyson on his views towards religion and science.

Political pressure groups, can't stop people from having those opinions. What people can do, however, is counter-lobby.

You could, of course, argue that it's akin to groups in the Southern United States lobbying against desegregation, but at the same time, the general American public attitude was racist, most significantly in the South. Whilst there was also alot of abuse and violence on both sides, having an opinion is not a crime on its own.

What if there were some gay parents who happened to be paedophiles as well? Nothing that can be done about it until warning signs start to appear, and any sexual orientation can be paedophiliac. But people shouldn't be criminalised for stating their opinions. Thought police, anyone?

I do NOT agree with homophobia at all, but at the same time, people should have their rights to individual opinions no matter what they are. Inciting hatred and violence is a different matter.

I see your point, when it comes to religion and homosexuals, I think they have the right to think and believe whatever they please, however the problem becomes when they actually have an influence on any government about wether or not to allow such people having the same rights and marital benefits, it wouldn't be any problem at all, if it didn't affect so much any society.

In the case of countries where gay marriages is legal nationwide, it doesn't have any problem because whatever religious churches may believe and say, it won't affect them.

This may be a controversial stance, but I don't believe people should have the right to say or believe something that is clearly not true. Halucaust deniers and people with traditional interpretations of religions all fit into this category. I believe in freedom, but not freedom to the point of being irresponsible.
I say this because the focus of any society SHOULD be to progress, to make life better for everyone, and it's kind of hard to progress when so many people are following lies. They'll go to insane means to protect that lie from again being proven a lie (no matter how many times it has previously been proven), and they may even resort to taking away or trampling other peoples' rights to those ends. If society can not deal with facts we can not progress, people will continue this history-old cycle of oppressing one another. If one person refuses to deal with a proven fact, that person will hold the rest of society back. If something is a proven and known fact, there should be no right to deny that fact.