Personally I feel that it’s LaVey Satanism. It’s just Nietzsche, Rand and Crowley watered and dumbed down into a mess devoid of any intellectual merit and sold for $100 to kids with nothing better to do.
I’m going to be very specific: ALL OF THEM!!!
The only thing people should follow religiously is there conscience!
Although I agree with the first statement, I’m not too sure about the second. Could you clarify?
I wouldn’t say that LaVey Satanism is a con per se, merely that it has fallen into the same state that Wicca and Discordianism have in the last decade, trendiness. High school kids looking for a way to rebel and be “different” eat this sort of stuff up.
When LaVey thought up his philosophy, I’m pretty sure he didn’t set out to make it “just Nietzsche, Rand and Crowley watered and dumbed down into a mess devoid of any intellectual merit” but once the marketing guys got hold of it, that’s what it became.
The “con” is on the part of the publishing houses who churn out copies of “The Book of Lies” “The Satanic Bible” or what have you and sell them for $100 to kids with nothing better to do.
I think people need to find their own morality, and their own reason to be moral. If you read the history of any country, religion is used as an excuse at some point for the killing and destruction of other people’s ways of life. God, no matter his character, becomes the justification to do anything that would normally be amoral. By making a proclamation from on high acts like the Crusades or Jihad (holy wars) become acceptable by people who would normally be opposed to such things. I believe people need to be more independently minded when it comes to their views on right and wrong.
Without religion wouldn’t people just find some other justification for slaughtering those who offended them though? I suspect that the crusader mindset will always be with us.
I most humbly agree with Pax Vitae. Those who have read my posts on this topic will already know that.
Grave Disorder stated:
I am sure that people will try to find other justifications. But without the church organization it will be increasingly more difficult to find justifications that don’t require logic, rationality, reason, facts, evidence, etc. I’m not saying that all will be right with the world when religions cease to exist, or I should say if they ever cease to exist. All I am saying is that things will become better because one of the biggests veils of ignorance (religion) will be lifted.
What’s your take?
If there’s one thing conservative politicians have taught me, it is that any impulse, no matter how irrational, can be argued for rationally.
I would have to say whichever one has the biggest following. Christianity currently has the blue ribbon with 33% of the world’s population and Islam follows closely at 22%. But who are we kidding? All religions ultimately have the same effect: They breed ignorance! and that is the definitive tragedy that has become of the creature enslaved by religion.
Hitler once said: “The bigger the lie the more people will believe in it”
Someone once asked me what hurts more, a bee sting or a wasp sting? 
From: phenomenal graffiti
While it is true that religion and “manifest destiny”( Man’s view that God gives them the right to do this or that) is psychologically responsible for a lot of the world’s atrocities, but even without religion there is still human nature, and the absence of religion does not guarantee a “nonpredatory” nirvana for mankind. People will still have racism, and territorialism to spur wars-as well as the senseless violence of man on man because of brain dysfunctionality in psychopaths. One could say that without religion, we would lose a lot of the ORGANIZED aggression of man against man or nation against nation, but because man is a naturally domineering creature to begin with, there will be plenty of alternative motivations for oppression and war.
As for all religion being ignorance…this goes back to subjective metaphysics again, or we claiming what exists and what does not independent of experience. I claim that this is unacceptable, and nature itself induces belief in a God by naturalistic inexorability.
But…this is only my view,
Jay M. Brewer
phenomenal_graffiti@yahoo.com
Morals and conscience are merely tools learnt for social living. Without society, they don’t exist.
Of all of them I think Catholicism followed by general christianity followed by muslim and jewish religions.
Why?
None of the others have its own CAPITOL like catholicism. Built by the followers over centuries.
If you formed a list of the top 100 Most Immoral and Terrible people in the History of the World, and were able to travel back in time to interview them, how many do you think would say they were following their own ideas of morality? The majority, I would guess.
I think the biggest sham is the idea that we are all qualified to make our own decisions about religion, morality, and such, even if we haven’t done anything to deserve the qualification. If everyone could be trusted to follow their hearts when it came to morality, we wouldn’t need laws and such. IF everyone could be trusted to follow their hearts concerning religion, we wouldn’t have Crusades and Scientology.
The study of Morality and Religion is a research and fact-based enterprise like anything else. Saying everybody should follow their own ideas about morality and religion is basically like saying everybody should follow their own ideas about how to fix a car. It’s silly. A few people desire to become experts, and the rest of people rely on those experts because they are busy becoming experts at something else, and don’t have time to do the research nessicary to make informed decisions about Judaism or transmission fluid. Sure, sometimes your mechanic does a bad job or overcharges you. Sure, sometimes a mechanic does such a bad job that people die. That doesn’t mean that car-fixing has to be thrown into the hands of the masses, who don’t know a allen wrench from a monkey wrench.
Before reading this post I was totally in favour of people choosing their own moralities to live by, etc. But now, although I can’t agree with what you have said, for it implies organised religion is necesary, i can think of no good argument against it.
The first aspect of this matter that needs to pointed out is that, although a philosopher may dismiss the veracity of the theological basis of all revealed religions on rational grounds, this should not lead to the inference that all religions are mere “cons”. Indeed to state that all religions are cons means to suggest that those who revealed them were all necessarily crooks with deceitful intentions and that nothing good can be obtained from the ideas and thories of these religions. Although this is certainly the case for many religions and cults, it is important to remember that religions, as known to us now, are based on the interpretations, inventions and biased reports of those who witnessed the rise of these religions and who first spread them. Indeed one only needs to look at the gospels to realise how a religion arose from four books which contradicted each other in various ways and which exhibited differing bias and agendas on behalf of the authors. Therefore the philosopher can attempt to look beyond the mystifications and look for something meaningful. This brings us to the following point: to dismiss all religions as equally deceitful and as equally pointless is both irrational and narrow minded. Indeed to fail to observe the varying degree of plausibility and qualitative difference between religions would mean to surrender reason to the most extreme and idiotic form of relativism. One cannot dismiss and ridicule the claims of the gospels with same degree of certainty as one would with dismiss the claims of modern day sects such as The Raelian Movement or The Panacean Society (which believes that Jesus will come to Bedford and that one can only be saved by being there when he comes !) and the ideas behind tribal cults in Africa or Papua New Guinea. Therefore, whereas one can consider the modern day sects mentioned and many others as the greatest and more cynical cons, and the tribal religions as irrational products of primitive cultures with no intellectual value, the gospels are objectively superior in all aspects, even though their foundations are flawed. Indeed, although the philosopher might dismiss the most transcendent and irrational parts of all religions (such as divine revelations or celestial figures), he can certainly recognise: differing degrees of moral value, differing degrees of plausibility, differing degrees of intellectual endevour and draw different conclusions on the intents of the “revealers” and evaluate their motivations.
Indeed, apart from the rational dismissal of modern day sects as cynical and deceitful products of men intent on exploiting consumerism and human idiocy, one can differentiate between the major religions too. The brutality, racial exclusivity, immorality and anthropomorphic conception of God exhibited by the Torah, the basis of Judaism, cannot be considered to be a con in the same way as the New Testament. Although one can dismiss all the theological claims of the NT, one can recognise its timeless ethical value and can be fascinated by the revolutionary, selfless and apolitical of figure of Jesus.
This kind of search for distinction and comparative method is what needs to guide one in differentiating between religions. Indeed, time and space permitting, a detailed objective analysis of what can be referred to as the “values” and motives of all religions permits to see the extent to which these religions are sheer cons, semi-cons or irrational but valuable messages.
I feel quite a bit of resentment towards religion in this thread. I feel that the majority of religions serve their purpose. They provide people with a reasonable model of the world and they provide their followers with a set of guidelines that can lead to a better, happier life. The problem lies within the organizations that promote a religion in order to attain power and/or money. These organizations often change the meaning of the original teaching so that the religion becomes more palatable or emphasize the punishments depicted within a religion so that the followers can easily be controlled.
Skeptic said:
Now I understand you didn’t intend for this to become a personal comment, but I do feel hurt that you would say that probably because of the fact that I am considering the priesthood. Granted I do have very firm stances but I also hope I have valid reasons to back up my stances, and if I don’t I sure as hell try to find some or change my stance. I certainly hope no one here would consider me to be ignorant and if you think I am acting in such a way please call me out on it!
Now again I call out natural law. About 99.5% of the teachings of the Catholic Chruch adhere to natural law. Ideally one wouldn’t need religion for any other reason than to know God because everyone would act rationally and according to natural law. Being human institutions, religions will be natually flawed. Focusing on Catholicism (because I know the most about it, am the most defensive at it, and saw a few indirect remarks about it) it has been wrong in the past, but it has also shown that it is willing to right those mistakes and change. Don’t attack it because it has a capitol. So the Catholic Church has a lot of wealth. It also does alot with that wealth. What otehr church to you see with missionaries in 6 of the 7 continants of the world? Also in most Catholic Churches, you don’t see them ordained to extravagantly.
Hey Qzx! I mean nothing intentionally or directly derogatory by my statement, but the fact is that religion breeds ignorance. The root of ignorance is ignore and that is what religious adherents do when it comes to the hard truth that their religion is just like every other religion; false. I don’t mean to insinuate that you yourself are unintelligent or ignorant because I have had previous discussions with you and I have found you to be quite intelligent and suprisingly open-minded. The facts are that the majority of religious people give up their specific beliefs on encountering higher learning in college or university. However, the fact does remain that 86% of the world’s population do hold some kind of religious beliefs, so please don’t think that I am calling 86% of the world’s population idiots because that would be ridiculous. I am only saying that, psychologically religion produces a phenomena that encourages believers to choose faith over fact. I have seen the phenomena first-hand many times and that is why I take the position that religious followers tend to choose ignorance.