The end of faith.

Originally Posted by deadsky

I agree with franposis on this one, crazy people are always going to be there. Religion is just a shield they can hide behind to justify their questionable actions, when something is done "in the name of God" they believe it's ok to slaughter thousands in war.

Of course, and if it were not religion, it would be something else. I mean that convenient skin color excuse for example? Any excuse to point to a group of people and say "they aren't like us in some way!!!" is good enough to start a war if the will is there.

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Personally I can't believe that God would wish slaughter on anyone seeing as he is omnibenevolent.

Depends which version of his biography you read. He's only a kind and loving God to everyone in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Other religions that decended from that same family tree don't make him out to be quite such a nice deity.

Originally Posted by Free.User

I agree with those points aswell, and the world would be a much better place if that idea was to become a reality. However, you can pretty much count on it never happening. Telling a religioius person to give up everything they beleive in is impossible. Faith is just that; faith.

So true. Even if you outlawed religion, it would still persist, but be better hidden. There's plenty of historical examples for that. You'd never stamp out religion even if you could convince 99% of believers to recant. As long as one believer in one religion remains, there's that chance he can win others over to his cause. Even if he has the craziest UFO-cult religion on the planet, as Phineas T. Barnum is often quoted as having said, "There's a sucker born every minute."

I'm not saying that Christianity or any of the other major religions are equivalent to other UFO cults. I'm just saying that some people have the gift of being able to win others over to their cause, no matter what that cause is. You've got to be quite the talker to win someone over to the ideo of suicide bombing, don't ya think? I don't think the promise of 72 virgins in the afterlife would convince me. A bird in the hand s worth two in the.... *achem* bush, and my life is one hell of a bird in the hand.

As long as those kind of slick-talking people exist, the worst kind of religious extremism will persist.

Originally Posted by franposis

In a way, atheism has always seemed like a religion to me, in that most of the people who are atheists believe in it as strongly as Christians do in God. I know I do; I put as much faith in science as I ever could in a religion.

A lot of Christian fundies have said this to me. I always told them that I thought they were full of shit. I guess if you can say that, they weren't quite so wrong as I thought. I believe there's something deeply wrong with the idea of atheism as a religion, or with the religion of science...

I'm an atheist myself. It shows, right? I don't treat it like a religion though. I treat it like the absense of religion. Science isn't sacred. It's a good tool, one of the best, but it's far from perfect and it's not something I put 'faith' in. For one thing, it doesn't require belief. The parts of science that work may be proved empirically.

It disturbs me a little that you can say this, but I'm sure it does no actual harm...

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by FallDragon

Well, being a good talker is a lot more necessary concerning non-religious faith like Nazism. Hitler had to be a good talker, to the degree where the German people thought that this guy really could lead them to prosperity. If they happen to a kill a few million non-believers and evildoers along the way, all for the better. As for religions like Islam, the need for smooth talking is a lot less. This is because they have their Holy texts that speak of them being rewarded in heaven for fighting infidels.

The reason I said that I assume you need to be a good talker is because I assume that even the most devout of believers has some doubt. Your life is a bird in the hand. It's the one thing you know you have. These rewards in the afterlife are quite uncertain. You won't ever know for sure that you're going to get them until the job is done. Plus scholars disagree on the meaning of the verses in question.

Then there's the 'creative' tactics that involve various parts of a pig being interred along with the bodies of terrorists. That's whole extra bunch of uncertainty that can add to the problem.

Isn't it only natural to have some doubts? I mean, no matter how devout you are, there might just be nothing. No afterlife. Just worm food. That's a big risk for these sucide bombers.

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So are we at war with Iraq? Or at war with Islam? Should people have freedom to choose a religion in which the majority of it's constituents are OK with suicide bombing non-believers?

Don't go there. Don't betray the founding principles of your nation just because of a few acts of terrorism. America was founded on freedom of religion.

That survey you posted is interesting, but is the data verifiable? If so, why is the question so broad? Is suicide bombing ever justfied? Well that 'ever' is a really nice touch, isn't it? It adds too many variables into the mix. Of course I'd rather say that it's not ever justified, but I didn't grow up in an that environment. Ask muslim people who grew up in my environment, and you'd get a completely different set of results. The answer then is to fix the enviroment in which they live.

Yeah, that's easier said than done.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by LordsSword

Part of what keeps a persons behavior in check is the thought that a God that seeks justice could be watching.

I don't believe for a second that this is universally true. Even in the cases where it is true I'm sure that it's far more prominent in the mind of someone contemplating rape or murder that he could receive punishment in the here and now rather than that he may be judged by God.

There ya go, I can make unsupported statements too. You can't assume that.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.