In most of Europe, religion is (by now) just recognised as a spiritual and emotional support to people, nothing more. The real problem are the interests of "certain groups" who want to abuse religious writing to substitute objective truths with "adulterated" dogmas.
Education is the only cure for ignorance. Nobody these days believes that Zeus causes lightning because we know what causes lightning. The major religion changes with time and is an expression of the ever narrowing ignorance of humanity.
Nobody these days believes that Zeus causes lightning because we know what causes lightning.
Nobody believes Zeus causes lightning because we don't have a large socio-economic institution predicated on building statues and rendering tribute to a Pagan priesthood.
But we still have our Gods of the Gaps - our superstitions and our irrational beliefs and our pseudoscientists.
Instead of pagan temples, we pay tribute to lotteries and celebrities and marketing gurus, convinced they will reward us with sudden prosperity, social status by association, and holy capitalist virtue.
The major religion changes with time and is an expression of the ever narrowing ignorance of humanity.
The unknown yawns before us like an abyss. Storm clouds part for the blackness of space and we trade in our divine ubermensch for extraterrestrials. Economics replaces alchemy in our quest for infinite effortless wealth. Our dowsing rods scour the latest batch of IPOs for that fountain of passive income. And few faced with their own morality can escape the siren's song of a quack cure-all, whether it is Ivermectin horse pills or the fresh blood of a young boy.
We've built facades of faith over genuine scientific institutions. And our faith combined with our works has granted us the mana of vaccination, internal combustion, and electrification. But don't think for a moment that we believe in these inventions because we understand them.
Especially in the age of miniaturization, our advanced technological becomes indistinguishable from magic. The modern world is a cargo cult. We only know the sacred mantras that summon the Uber Eats Driver. We know not from wence he came.
Religion. Humanity's longest running "prank gone too far"
There are people who abuse religion and those who don't. Let people alone if they let you alone. By no means should religion have any part in government.
I learned recently that "deist" means what it says. Many founding fathers were indeed Free Masons (they knew mathematics and built things-- a topic recently mentioned on Lemmy that got me curious), and the deists believed (and some maybe studied other religions) that no one can tell another what their relationship to the Divine was, or lack thereof. That's why we have the Separation Clause, and article 11 of the Treaty of Tripoli. Btw, don't let article 11 hi down the memory hole. First Google result claimed it never said USA isn't a Christian nation and that's most certainly a contradiction what I read in the Treaty multiple times, over multiple years.
Religion and faith are two related but distinct things. Faith is a particular collection of beliefs about the nature of the world.
Religion is a form of social control that uses faith to imprison those that share the faith. Which is why gods frequently seem so schizophrenic.
They love you unconditionally, but also are the cause of all your suffering. If you don’t worship the right way. If you don’t let the clerics and rich fucks take your girls and rape them, if you don’t give your money. If you upstage the worship leader’s wife, singing that one song.
Ultimately, faith says, “I believe x.” Where religion says “I believe x and if you don’t agree with me, I will kill you.”
Religion will always attract the worst elements. The narcissists, the morally defunct. The ethically challenged. Because that power appeals to them.
The Catholic Church didn’t get fucking rich, and holds the power of a nation-state by feeding the poor and tending the sick.
I think religion is a good fall back for humans who have experienced incredibly traumatic things, who would otherwise lose their mind because of it. But i think 80-95% of the current userbase doesnt need it.
Let religion be the guide on things that have not and can not be explained by science.
For everything else, let's defer to science.
Letting fairy tales be our guide and explanation for anything is bad. If we don’t know how something works better to admit it and try to learn than to make up horse shit about it. Lies are bad.
Go ahead and find a scientific answer for what happens to your spirit/consciousness when you die.
It's not a question that can be answered scientifically. You can't test dying. You can't talk with dead people and document what they are experiencing.
There are aspects of the human condition that can't be tested with the scientific process. I'm alright with religion or philosophy handling those questions.
Also, do not mistake my argument here as a representation of my personal beliefs about spirits, consciousness, or the existence of an afterlife. I barely acknowledge the existence of one of those things.
Spirit is an inherently religious concept and cannot be proven either. The burden of proof is on the person making the claim and you literally cannot prove that exists. We can prove that consciousness stops at death by observing that brain activity stops. This make believe gives con artists a way to rob us and turn people against each other. Religion is memetic cancer and does not provide benefit.
I appreciate that you don’t believe this stuff but it’s still bad to support it. The proverbial devil doesn’t need an advocate.
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