Question: Anyone else utterly perplexed that so many people STILL buy into religious myths?
I get the "God" concept for how it's abstract enough to gain respect on an individual basis... like if you're a pantheist or whatever I'll listen to your interpretation BUT to say that a Abrahamic religion is true requires me to have a poker face that I'm incapable of keeping. It's preposterous.
(Reasonable people ONLY!)
Relation Questions:
Answer:
Well I wouldn't class myself as a reasonable person, but what the hell. Let me make it simple for you. God can not be proved or disproved. Is that simple enough. Anyway the only solution is to be agnostic. Because weather you like it or not, we are all agnostics deep down, savvy.
Anyone else utterly perplexed that so many atheists keep arguing with fundamentalist Christians about whether the Bible is mythical or factual?
Atheists! Stop playing in the same sandbox as the theists. Those of us who believe in God, and understand that mythology is not fact, grow tired of the atheist arguments against the supposed factuality of the Bible. Of course it's mythology. That doesn't mean there isn't some wisdom within it, and it doesn't mean that God does not exist.
Why not try advancing the dialog somewhat? Leave the fundies behind, where they belong, and engage those of us who believe in a trans-rational, transpersonal God.
Peace and Namaste!
EDIT: How sad. You seem to think you are so smart, but according to the edit you wrote to me, it shows that you are intellectually lazy, and just plain dumb. Typical atheist, having grown soft after too many years playing with the fundies in their sandbox. And here I was getting my hopes up thinking I would be dialoging with someone whom I thought would be intelligent. Oh well, hope springs eternal.
Peace!
To a large extent I find it baffling. I think the main reasons it is STILL common are societal conditioning and early indoctrination.
All religions amount to nothing more than a socially-acceptable excuse for adults to believe in magic, but the Abrahamic faiths are particularly awful. Taking the mythology of the ancient Middle East seriously in the modern world strikes me as pathological on the face of it.
Yes it is very perplexing that the Abrahamic religions each claim that their religion is the one true religion. It is absurd and asinine to think and claim that there is a right and wrong interpretation regarding who or what this "God" is.
It's perplexing only if you view religions as purely irrational beliefs. I have a different view, in my opinion a propensity to have religious beliefs is likely to be an evolved adaptation. In experiments shattering people's sense of control makes people more likely to say everything happens according to a cosmic plan. This is exactly what we'd expect if a capacity for supernatural beliefs was an evolved anxiety-reducing tool.
http://newhumanist.org.uk/2220/who-needs…
A quote from the article: "For example, he found that when you make people imagine themselves to be in a situation over which they have no control, it actually makes them more likely to say that the universe operates according to a plan."
Thinking of religion as irrational belief is missing the point. Of course it's irrational, but it serves a purpose: To make people feel better when they're anxious. This is why less people are religious in societies where people are more secure (especially financially) and thus less anxious. Source in the article to which I linked to.
Edit: That doesn't address what I said. While specific religious might or might not be a primitive mankind's attempt to explain the unexplainable, that's irrelevant because religiousness as a whole is an evolved adaptation. Evolved traits are hard to shake. Every day you do things which were evolutionarily selected for. So have a little understanding for these people.
Yeah. It is a never ending mystery to me that the establishment continues to "respect" religious institutions when they absolutely do not deserve any respect and are, in fact, insults to humanity.
I hear you and think also about how they religion and religion leaders are always sticking their noses into government. They do not pay taxes and also our dumb *** government uses our taxes to fund religions.
I'm perplexed that in a civilsed society patronizing smug jerks like you still exist
Lazy or scared is all I can figure.
seems logical to me