Poll of the Day > 'th wrld wud b so mcuh beter with no religion!!!'

(+) Yeah! (+)

if we got rid of religion people would just completely stop wondering why we are here and totally NOT fill the void with another creation/origin story!
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However, in the words of Madalyn Murray O'Hair - atheists are lazy do nothings who would rather complain about the problem than fix it.
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Lokarin posted...

atheists are lazy do nothings who would rather complain about the problem than fix it.

So like... you want me to outlaw religion or something? That quote is stupid.

knivesX2004 posted...

So like... you want me to outlaw religion or something? That quote is stupid.

Outlaw? no, people have the right to chose to be deceived.

However, you could help spread secular ideas and contest ignorance wherever it be.
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Religion gave us the drive to evolve our culture. Without religion, we would still be in the stone age

Zikten posted...

Religion gave us the drive to evolve our culture. Without religion, we would still be in the stone age

Pretty sure that was agriculture
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TES_Nut posted...

Zikten posted...

Religion gave us the drive to evolve our culture. Without religion, we would still be in the stone age

Pretty sure that was agriculture

religion helped us along quite a bit actually. a lot of it is dated these days and could use some changing/updating, but its past influence is kinda dopey to deny.

wouldn't get rid of it entirely though. some aspects of it are kinda nice.
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Don't forget that AT THE TIME, Religious beliefs were legitimately the rational option. Sacrifices as population control, tithes to finance infrastructure and the like were a boon to early man.
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Nade Duck posted...

wouldn't get rid of it entirely though. some aspects of it are kinda nice.

you can't get rid of one part and keep another

you either get rid of it entirely, or keep it in its entirety
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DirtBasedSoap posted...

if we got rid of religion people would just completely stop wondering why we are here and totally NOT fill the void with another creation/origin story!

They wouldn't fill the void with another creator story unless they're severely damaged. Most people just accept the unknown for what it is at that point. It's better to admit ignorance than cling to a metaphorical security blanket with no basis in reality.
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TheCyborgNinja posted...

They wouldn't fill the void with another creator story unless they're severely damaged. Most people just accept the unknown for what it is at that point. It's better to admit ignorance than cling to a metaphorical security blanket with no basis in reality.

You don't think science has filled that void? People accept any number of scientific hypotheses without a shred of evidence, just because they're labeled "science." It takes just as much faith to believe that life probably came to earth from outer space as it does to believe that God probably created us. If anything, the latter explanation is more scientifically sound than the first one.
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Lirishae posted...

TheCyborgNinja posted...

They wouldn't fill the void with another creator story unless they're severely damaged. Most people just accept the unknown for what it is at that point. It's better to admit ignorance than cling to a metaphorical security blanket with no basis in reality.

You don't think science has filled that void? People accept any number of scientific hypotheses without a shred of evidence, just because they're labeled "science." It takes just as much faith to believe that life probably came to earth from outer space as it does to believe that God probably created us. If anything, the latter explanation is more scientifically sound than the first one.

Try getting the scientific community to accept your ideas without a shred of evidence and get back to me.
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Clench281 posted...

Lirishae posted...

TheCyborgNinja posted...

They wouldn't fill the void with another creator story unless they're severely damaged. Most people just accept the unknown for what it is at that point. It's better to admit ignorance than cling to a metaphorical security blanket with no basis in reality.

You don't think science has filled that void? People accept any number of scientific hypotheses without a shred of evidence, just because they're labeled "science." It takes just as much faith to believe that life probably came to earth from outer space as it does to believe that God probably created us. If anything, the latter explanation is more scientifically sound than the first one.

Try getting the scientific community to accept your ideas without a shred of evidence and get back to me.

Do you understand what science is? It's mankind's best guess about how things work. There is no absolute proof that anything we currently believe is 100% true and final. That's why we have the theory of relativity, evolution, etc.--there is no absolute proof that any of these things are true, nor will there ever be. There's a lot of evidence that they probably are, and there's broad consensus among scientists that they probably are, but everything we know is potentially one discovery away from being completely irrelevant. Accepting hypotheses and theories as the truth requires a leap of faith that most people don't even realize they're making. And have you done any reading about topics such as what caused the Big Bang or the origin of life? There's no evidence for any number of hypotheses like panspermia, yet there are people who accept these ideas anyway simply because they were labeled "science" instead of "religion." It takes just as much faith to believe that life probably came to earth from outer space as it does to believe that God probably created us.
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Lirishae posted...

There is no absolute proof that anything we currently believe is 100% true and final.

The same applies to religion, but facts actually have to be 99.99999999997% certain to actually be facts so they have pretty solid credentials.
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Lokarin posted...

Don't forget that AT THE TIME, Religious beliefs were legitimately the rational option. Sacrifices as population control, tithes to finance infrastructure and the like were a boon to early man.

Pretty sure ripping the hearts out of your enemies wasn't related to population control, even unintentionally.
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Lirishae posted...

There's no evidence for any number of hypotheses like panspermia, yet there are people who accept these ideas anyway simply because they were labeled "science" instead of "religion."

Evidence isn't the only driving force, opportunity plays a big role (i.e. We know these things do this so those things can do that.).

Science is simply a collection of everything we know, there's no "Science works in mysterious ways" to hand wave questioning. If you don't know why science suggests something, the information is out there for you to make sense of it and if it doesn't make sense to you, you can discuss it and clear up inclarity with further study.
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Aliens made up religions when they created us, in my opinion. It's a theory that's fun to play around with but nothing I'd downright preach to others as the truth.

I believe the Garden of Eden was a laboratory for gene splicing their own DNA with neanderthals. God may have been "them." Substitute God for aliens in the Bible and it suddenly becomes a very interesting story; one of my favorite examples is Genesis 1:26-- "Let us make human beings in our image."

I believe evolution is real, but we may have had a jump start. We have alien genes (as in foreign) that don't align with any of any of the other 618 ape species.

I realize I probably sound batshit crazy, but if our dated history only goes back 2,000-6,000 years (hell, even 50,000 if you want) and our Earth is 4.5 billion years old, is it so far-fetched to claim that we might have had visitors since then? I'd be willing to bet most of GameFAQs believes life exists elsewhere in our uni/multiverse.

Another interesting thing to point out is that gold has anti-gravity properties. White gold, I think it's called? At one point in history, humans made the discovery, that, when poured onto a pan sitting on a scale, the scale began to weigh less. Many kings in history were depicted as "half-lizard/snake, half man." Could it be this is why kings sought gold and enslaved men?

Why is it that despite the fact that humans had NO WAY of communicating with each other across great distances in the same relative time period the Mayans and the Ancient Egyptions had pyramids built so intact that you can't even slip a piece of paper in between the blocks?

Baalbek was a town/site that had 8-13 ton block stones placed in the same way on top of each other so that you couldn't even jam anything in between those, either. Google "Ancient Baalbek" and tell me a bunch of hunter-gatherers built those. They didn't even have agriculture yet, the precursor of civilization. Even if these guys HAD the intelligence to do this, when did they find the time to do it?

Too many coincidences like these. It might be easy to debunk some that are similar, but the sheer quantity of this type of crap, to me, raises much bigger questions. The resemblances are uncanny.

For the record, if anyone wants to roast me-- I get it-- but I really despise that Ancient Aliens show. I read books. Ancient Aliens lost all credibility with me when they started comparing aliens to superheros or some shit. Still love the meme though.

So now the real question is: if all of this DOES suggest we've had visitors, why do these claims that scientists, historians, and archaeologists make all get discredited? What does society gain from being lied to?

Nothing. It's all about control.
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Steve Harvey says that without religion we'd just all go around killing each other, because we need the threat of punishment in the afterlife to keep us as decent fucking people or something.
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HellHole_ posted...

Nade Duck posted...

wouldn't get rid of it entirely though. some aspects of it are kinda nice.

you can't get rid of one part and keep another

you either get rid of it entirely, or keep it in its entirety

you dont always have to throw the baby out with the bathwater my dude, you can always push for positve change in almost everything, even something as tangled as religion
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

The same applies to religion, but facts actually have to be 99.99999999997% certain to actually be facts so they have pretty solid credentials.

There are things that used to be considered facts that are no longer considered as such, because science marched onward and proved the facts wrong. Facts, evidence and reason are wonderful things to be sure, but it's important to realize our understanding of the universe is always one discovery away from being completely overturned.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

Evidence isn't the only driving force, opportunity plays a big role (i.e. We know these things do this so those things can do that.).

Science is simply a collection of everything we know, there's no "Science works in mysterious ways" to hand wave questioning. If you don't know why science suggests something, the information is out there for you to make sense of it and if it doesn't make sense to you, you can discuss it and clear up inclarity with further study.

Evidence is not the same thing as proof. Evidence gives grounds for believing something is true. Proof establishes a thing as true. We have plenty of evidence that germs cause illness, and it's commonly accepted as true. I certainly believe it is true. But we don't have 100% absolute, irrefutable proof that it's true; accepting it as true means placing our faith in the scientists and researchers who tell us it's true based on such-and-such evidence. For all we know, the appearance of germs simply correlate with the true underlying cause of illness, and treatments designed to get rid of the germs actually get rid of the real problem. I'm not saying I believe that, just trying to illustrate how easily what we know can change. What we've learned about quantum physics challenged what we knew about general relativity. The more you study about science, the more you realize how much is unknown.

Edit:
@RedPixel It's an interesting thought exercise to be sure. Just curious, why does the story become more believable to you when it's aliens instead of God? Where do the aliens come from? I'm not criticizing or anything, just asking ^^
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Lirishae posted...

@RedPixel It's an interesting thought exercise to be sure. Just curious, why does the story become more believable to you when it's aliens instead of God? Where do the aliens come from? I'm not criticizing or anything, just asking ^^

Reading my original post after you tagged me, I'm not sure I used the term "more believable" in that type of context, so forgive me if there was any indication that that's what I was implying.

I admitted to being an atheist in the sense that I don't believe in God in the same fashion that others might ("organized" religion), but I also study quantum physics and feel inclined to believe that there is a creator. In fact, in the reproductive sense, the universe has more female qualities/tendencies than male. So maybe I believe in God in that context. There are many resemblances in our reality that parallel quantum computing-- what we live, see, feel, breathe, taste, observe, and love might all just be an unfathomably large quantum computer simulation. Highly recommend reading Seth Lloyd's work on this. Basically anything we can study can be compared to bits of information. The uni/multiverse might constantly be expanding itself with 0 regard to life, good or bad. This is where my idea of a God differs the most from others. Genetics might be elaborate object-oriented programming. Who knows?

These are just my thoughts and I try to be respectful of others' opinions. I don't like to be the atheist who tells others they're all wrong. Quite the opposite, actually. I hope I'm completely wrong and there is a God. Many nights of mine have been spent thinking there's no point in life except to just have fun until we die. And it's depressing. Other days are better than others. I have a wife who I'm madly in love with, a great job, and other pleasant distractions from the possible unpleasant truths.
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did anyone get the stupid point I was trying to make? you can't get rid of religion
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DirtBasedSoap posted...

did anyone get the stupid point I was trying to make? you can't get rid of religion

I got it lol
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A world without religion, you say? This was on yesterday.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_God_Go#Plot