The Supreme Court on Thursday, in a 4-4 ruling, said Oklahoma cannot create the nation's first religious charter school funded directly with taxpayer dollars.
The fact that this is a debate at all, in the year of our fantasy, fairytale, magic miracle performing lord, 2025, is just sickening to me.
Religion should be studied sociologically, psychologically, and historically for what it actually is, mythology and superstition. It should be studied for how it’s been used as a tool for control of the ignorant and poor masses, by the elites to keep power and wealth.
But no. 70-80% or more of people on this planet still actually believe in fairytale bronze age mythology nonsense. Doctors, senators, police, military leadership, judges.
We have split the atom, discovered quantum mechanics, have robots and helicopters on Mars, cured diseases. Yet we are still so archaic and uncivilized. Religion should have died already.
Religion is a cultural lie and even those that are religious know it. They want to bully people into “saying the words with them” because it makes them feel better. They don’t care if you believe or not … they just want you to say the words or at the least have it be illegal to contradict them. Most religious people’s egos are so weak that they cannot handle questioning their faith because it shatters their own.
but there is alittle belief in buddhism, eventhough they dont pratice fully like monks in tibet do. some are very hard into praticing and those people tend to be more conservative in general. we had a porcelain statue of said buddhas but not go crazy religious, and vegan like some do.
Sorry, not correct. 90% don’t associate with “religion”, but to them that means religious orgs. 30% of Chinese people believe in Buddha. Only around 30% are actually Atheist
Wait I thought Buddhism was technically an atheistic religion, with the exception being the more syncretized branch offs? Kinda in the same weird area and Neo-platonic philosophy.
Buddhism is nothing more than an inclusive set of guidelines people can choose to follow to be happier (nirvana), and not an exclusive “religion” reserved for believers. The “Buddha” actually started his life as a spoiled hindu prince, and then got tired of being rich, and starved himself under a tree to find true enlightenment.
Look up the 4 noble truths and the eightfold path if you want to learn what buddhism actually is. I would link it, but i don’t know how to embed links on here.
I have always believed that Jesus was a Buddhist. If not, he sure acted like one.
Until you can explain the universe with a formula religion will not die, and even then the formula could be argued to be the rational expression of god. And it is not clear to me that religion is bad. Bad people are bad, (although I entirely dismiss the notion of evil) and they use structures in religions, politics et all to do bad things. But that doesn’t mean that religion itself is bad.
I’m not religious myself, but there’s very clearly a place for religion even in modern civilizations. Also one fundamental aspect of religion that many critics miss because they confuse it with spirituality, is community. More than ever people need a sense of community, and I think that for many people religion can be the thing that gives them that.
And after saying all that, people should have the freedoms to believe whatever the fuck they want honestly.
Anime builds communities - some of the largest gatherings in the world are anime conventions, people build shrines to the characters, some even go so far as to claim marriage to the characters most dear to them - and yet anime has never been the justification for genocide, the rationalization for slavery or the claimed source from which all morality is derived. And yet despite all that, I’m 100% certain you’ll agree someone holding an unshakable conviction in ‘My Hero Academia’ as a literal accounting of historical events should be precluded from any position of authority. On the grounds that they’re too divorced from reality to make sound decisions.
This is what the religious masses look like to the sane outsiders. You claim many good things that religion provides, but you fail to acknowledge that those things can exist completely independently of a system responsible for more death, suffering and cruelty than any other humanity has developed. At best that’s just plain ignorant, at worst it’s intentional deception.
You seem to think that religion is the cause or the “excuse”. But it isnt. The cause and the justification is that we are animals like any other, flawed and guided by instincts. It is our nature to want more than we have, even when we have enough because the future is always uncertain.
Just like humans don’t need religion to have morality we do not need religion to justify genocide, war and violence. It would have happened through any other justification.
If we take your view to the extreme I could also use it as a justification for genocide, just to illustrate my point. So no, religion is not the problem itself.
I hate to get all schoolyard here, but yes it is. I’ll happily grant that the root cause behind nearly every suffering is that humans can be convinced to be awful tribalistic little shits to each other at the drop of a hat, but there’s no honest way to get away from the reality that religion has been and continues to be the #1 hat to drop when you’re looking to appeal to humanity’s basic capacity for cruelty. Look, I can easily demonstrate the point - find me an ethnic cleansing where religion wasn’t a primary motivation/justification. I’ll wait.
And please feel free to take my view to the extreme! But it falls just a little bit flat when you do, since I don’t have to take religion to an extreme to find examples of it being used to justify all kinds of horrible things. Do I think that an abstract concept (like a system of belief) is in itself good or evil? No. Nuns don’t kill people, people kill people. But I do think it’s a tool which has, time and time again, demonstrated that it brings nothing to society which cannot be gained elsewhere, yet introduces an incredibly easily exploited and basely irrational system wherever it gets it’s toe in the door. It’s an outdated concept that needs to be left in the dust of history, there only to serve as a cautionary tale for those that come after (though I admit that as a species, we’re godawful about actually paying attention to those…)
side note
(Okay so fair’s fair: arguably mitma wasn’t religiously motivated. It gets a bit fuzzy as the Inca often used religion as a tool to provoke or promote resettlement, and that’s on top of the whole blending of religion and bureaucratic system. It’s a fascinating topic, really, and I’d be willing to debate its applicability if you’d like!)
You confuse justification for cause. Again my argument that even in a world in which somehow organized religion never developed, the same violence would have happened under a different pretense or even no pretense at all.
“I want what you have and I can take it, so I will” is enough justification in a perfectly rational non religious world for any kind of war and violence.
In a world where religion never developed, nothing would have changed? Then it rather clearly carries that it’s sole use has been to introduce some exploitable divisions in our non-hypothetical universe. I’m sorry, I think you’re actually making my case for me at this point.
(I’m not confusing boo, and don’t presume to tell me what I mean.)
Bad People will do Bad Things, but religion gets Good People to do Bad Things. because they believe they are good.
Sincere but incorrect belief can do that without anything we might recognize as religion, tho.
Still I think Optimistic Nihilism CAN replace all the things people think they get from religion. And, it doesn’t require fervent belief in anything without evidence. (Sometimes the optimism feels tenuous, tho.)
You make a lot of great points here that I try (often to no avail) to explain to people all the time. Namely these two:
Arguing whether there’s a creator or the universe began spontaneously doesn’t really matter, as the existence of a creator (or architect, or programmer, you could phrase it different ways) only moves the goalposts one spot and the question still remains: why does anything exist rather than nothing?
Religion isn’t inherently bad or evil. It’s a human construct and is as susceptible to corruption and misuse as any other, from governments to sports organizations to scientific groups to academic institutions to PTA boards and HOAs.
Exactly. It’s very easy to see how the judgement of how religion has been utilized for terrible things can itself be a justification to do the exact same terrible things. If that is the case then clearly the thing itself is not the problem, but rather how we use the thing.
Governments and the concept of nation-states have never been used to instigate ethnic cleansing? Sports organizations have never been complicit in something as heinous as slave labor?
Quatari Kafala is directly derived from Shiara. It’s even alluded to in the article you linked. I know it’s leaning into the stereotype and honestly I’m usually a whole lot less rude than this, but my dude that was a truly terrible example to go with.
(Edit: Sorry to be clear, yes, that’s absolutely correct - I’m aware of no ethnic cleansing, government or otherwise, that’s been divorced from religion. Nor do I know of any broad slavery schemes that don’t use religion as a justification for their actions. I really really want you to check me on this because it’ll be damned educational, and to be totally fair I’m not actually certain that there’s never been a secular slave trade. Just fairly confident.)
Right. And FIFA, a secular organization headquartered in Switzerland, selected Qatar knowing all this and they were perfectly ok with that sort of exploitation to make the World Cup happen. To say nothing else of their history of bribery and corruption.
Companies with no religious affiliation are no better. They’ll produce bombs, sell weapons to terrorists and genocidal governments, whatever brings home the bacon.
PTAs and school boards discriminate against trans and queer kids all the time. HOAs discriminate against minorities all the time.
People in groups have always used their power to enrich themselves, hurt others, and control the world around them. This is a phenomenon that isn’t limited to any one organization, sacred or secular.
Not being churlish I’m genuinely a little unclear - what’s your thesis here? I don’t think it’s news that a secular organization can be involved with vile systems, but that appears to be the crux (sorry) of what you’re trying to say. I think we may be arguing past one another.
My point is that religion isn’t inherently a negative thing. And not worse than any other human institution solely because of its belief in the supernatural, and that organized religion is just as susceptible to corruption and weaponization as any institution.
A very pessimistic thank you.
The fact that this is a debate at all, in the year of our fantasy, fairytale, magic miracle performing lord, 2025, is just sickening to me.
Religion should be studied sociologically, psychologically, and historically for what it actually is, mythology and superstition. It should be studied for how it’s been used as a tool for control of the ignorant and poor masses, by the elites to keep power and wealth.
But no. 70-80% or more of people on this planet still actually believe in fairytale bronze age mythology nonsense. Doctors, senators, police, military leadership, judges.
We have split the atom, discovered quantum mechanics, have robots and helicopters on Mars, cured diseases. Yet we are still so archaic and uncivilized. Religion should have died already.
Religion is a cultural lie and even those that are religious know it. They want to bully people into “saying the words with them” because it makes them feel better. They don’t care if you believe or not … they just want you to say the words or at the least have it be illegal to contradict them. Most religious people’s egos are so weak that they cannot handle questioning their faith because it shatters their own.
Religion is also social control.
I was blown away recently when I found out that 90’ish percent of chinese people are athiests.
but there is alittle belief in buddhism, eventhough they dont pratice fully like monks in tibet do. some are very hard into praticing and those people tend to be more conservative in general. we had a porcelain statue of said buddhas but not go crazy religious, and vegan like some do.
Sorry, not correct. 90% don’t associate with “religion”, but to them that means religious orgs. 30% of Chinese people believe in Buddha. Only around 30% are actually Atheist
Source: https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2023/08/30/non-religion/
Wait I thought Buddhism was technically an atheistic religion, with the exception being the more syncretized branch offs? Kinda in the same weird area and Neo-platonic philosophy.
This. So much this.
Buddhism is nothing more than an inclusive set of guidelines people can choose to follow to be happier (nirvana), and not an exclusive “religion” reserved for believers. The “Buddha” actually started his life as a spoiled hindu prince, and then got tired of being rich, and starved himself under a tree to find true enlightenment.
Look up the 4 noble truths and the eightfold path if you want to learn what buddhism actually is. I would link it, but i don’t know how to embed links on here.
I have always believed that Jesus was a Buddhist. If not, he sure acted like one.
Ah ok, gotcha 👍
Until you can explain the universe with a formula religion will not die, and even then the formula could be argued to be the rational expression of god. And it is not clear to me that religion is bad. Bad people are bad, (although I entirely dismiss the notion of evil) and they use structures in religions, politics et all to do bad things. But that doesn’t mean that religion itself is bad.
I’m not religious myself, but there’s very clearly a place for religion even in modern civilizations. Also one fundamental aspect of religion that many critics miss because they confuse it with spirituality, is community. More than ever people need a sense of community, and I think that for many people religion can be the thing that gives them that.
And after saying all that, people should have the freedoms to believe whatever the fuck they want honestly.
Anime builds communities - some of the largest gatherings in the world are anime conventions, people build shrines to the characters, some even go so far as to claim marriage to the characters most dear to them - and yet anime has never been the justification for genocide, the rationalization for slavery or the claimed source from which all morality is derived. And yet despite all that, I’m 100% certain you’ll agree someone holding an unshakable conviction in ‘My Hero Academia’ as a literal accounting of historical events should be precluded from any position of authority. On the grounds that they’re too divorced from reality to make sound decisions.
This is what the religious masses look like to the
saneoutsiders. You claim many good things that religion provides, but you fail to acknowledge that those things can exist completely independently of a system responsible for more death, suffering and cruelty than any other humanity has developed. At best that’s just plain ignorant, at worst it’s intentional deception.You seem to think that religion is the cause or the “excuse”. But it isnt. The cause and the justification is that we are animals like any other, flawed and guided by instincts. It is our nature to want more than we have, even when we have enough because the future is always uncertain.
Just like humans don’t need religion to have morality we do not need religion to justify genocide, war and violence. It would have happened through any other justification.
If we take your view to the extreme I could also use it as a justification for genocide, just to illustrate my point. So no, religion is not the problem itself.
I hate to get all schoolyard here, but yes it is. I’ll happily grant that the root cause behind nearly every suffering is that humans can be convinced to be awful tribalistic little shits to each other at the drop of a hat, but there’s no honest way to get away from the reality that religion has been and continues to be the #1 hat to drop when you’re looking to appeal to humanity’s basic capacity for cruelty. Look, I can easily demonstrate the point - find me an ethnic cleansing where religion wasn’t a primary motivation/justification. I’ll wait.
And please feel free to take my view to the extreme! But it falls just a little bit flat when you do, since I don’t have to take religion to an extreme to find examples of it being used to justify all kinds of horrible things. Do I think that an abstract concept (like a system of belief) is in itself good or evil? No. Nuns don’t kill people, people kill people. But I do think it’s a tool which has, time and time again, demonstrated that it brings nothing to society which cannot be gained elsewhere, yet introduces an incredibly easily exploited and basely irrational system wherever it gets it’s toe in the door. It’s an outdated concept that needs to be left in the dust of history, there only to serve as a cautionary tale for those that come after (though I admit that as a species, we’re godawful about actually paying attention to those…)
side note
(Okay so fair’s fair: arguably mitma wasn’t religiously motivated. It gets a bit fuzzy as the Inca often used religion as a tool to provoke or promote resettlement, and that’s on top of the whole blending of religion and bureaucratic system. It’s a fascinating topic, really, and I’d be willing to debate its applicability if you’d like!)
You confuse justification for cause. Again my argument that even in a world in which somehow organized religion never developed, the same violence would have happened under a different pretense or even no pretense at all.
“I want what you have and I can take it, so I will” is enough justification in a perfectly rational non religious world for any kind of war and violence.
In a world where religion never developed, nothing would have changed? Then it rather clearly carries that it’s sole use has been to introduce some exploitable divisions in our non-hypothetical universe. I’m sorry, I think you’re actually making my case for me at this point.
(I’m not confusing boo, and don’t presume to tell me what I mean.)
Bad People will do Bad Things, but religion gets Good People to do Bad Things. because they believe they are good.
Sincere but incorrect belief can do that without anything we might recognize as religion, tho.
Still I think Optimistic Nihilism CAN replace all the things people think they get from religion. And, it doesn’t require fervent belief in anything without evidence. (Sometimes the optimism feels tenuous, tho.)
until you can conquer the fear of death and the unknown, religion will persist.
People should not be afraid of death. We were dead for 13.8 billion years before we were here.
You make a lot of great points here that I try (often to no avail) to explain to people all the time. Namely these two:
Arguing whether there’s a creator or the universe began spontaneously doesn’t really matter, as the existence of a creator (or architect, or programmer, you could phrase it different ways) only moves the goalposts one spot and the question still remains: why does anything exist rather than nothing?
Religion isn’t inherently bad or evil. It’s a human construct and is as susceptible to corruption and misuse as any other, from governments to sports organizations to scientific groups to academic institutions to PTA boards and HOAs.
Exactly. It’s very easy to see how the judgement of how religion has been utilized for terrible things can itself be a justification to do the exact same terrible things. If that is the case then clearly the thing itself is not the problem, but rather how we use the thing.
It’s holographic.
A reasonable rebuttal might be that all those other things have never been co-opted to instigate, for example, an ethnic cleansing.
deleted by creator
I think that’s been covered elsewhere.
Governments and the concept of nation-states have never been used to instigate ethnic cleansing? Sports organizations have never been complicit in something as heinous as slave labor?
Quatari Kafala is directly derived from Shiara. It’s even alluded to in the article you linked. I know it’s leaning into the stereotype and honestly I’m usually a whole lot less rude than this, but my dude that was a truly terrible example to go with.
(Edit: Sorry to be clear, yes, that’s absolutely correct - I’m aware of no ethnic cleansing, government or otherwise, that’s been divorced from religion. Nor do I know of any broad slavery schemes that don’t use religion as a justification for their actions. I really really want you to check me on this because it’ll be damned educational, and to be totally fair I’m not actually certain that there’s never been a secular slave trade. Just fairly confident.)
Right. And FIFA, a secular organization headquartered in Switzerland, selected Qatar knowing all this and they were perfectly ok with that sort of exploitation to make the World Cup happen. To say nothing else of their history of bribery and corruption.
Companies with no religious affiliation are no better. They’ll produce bombs, sell weapons to terrorists and genocidal governments, whatever brings home the bacon.
PTAs and school boards discriminate against trans and queer kids all the time. HOAs discriminate against minorities all the time.
People in groups have always used their power to enrich themselves, hurt others, and control the world around them. This is a phenomenon that isn’t limited to any one organization, sacred or secular.
Not being churlish I’m genuinely a little unclear - what’s your thesis here? I don’t think it’s news that a secular organization can be involved with vile systems, but that appears to be the crux (sorry) of what you’re trying to say. I think we may be arguing past one another.
My point is that religion isn’t inherently a negative thing. And not worse than any other human institution solely because of its belief in the supernatural, and that organized religion is just as susceptible to corruption and weaponization as any institution.
To be clear, I’m an atheist.