Do we need religious institutions?

Uccisore stated:

You first statement is quite correct. That is why I do believe in a higher power, but what that higher power is I am clueless. I just sense that there must be more to our universe than our lonely island called earth. Whether the higher power is a more sophisticated race than ours, or some kind of an all powerful substance, or some kind of ultimate consciousness, is uncertain for me. No religion to date has been able to convince me even slightly that their doctrine is somehow onto something and that their conception of God might be right. That’s why I stay away from the word ‘God’, too many people associate it with a religion. I choose to say I believe in a ‘higher power’. In a way that is agnosticism, but in another way it isn’t cause I am not convinced that there is a God, I just think there is some higher life form other than us, whether it be alien, planet, spirit, ghost, or God him/her/itself. Your statement about Christians is a presumptuous one, you cannot know what each Christian claims about their relationship with God, I have met many Christians and I can’t say that any two of them have the same view of their relationship with God. You barry yourself further by assuming that their relationship with God is DIRECT, if it was direct for all Christians then we would all be Christians and all have the DIRECT line to God. We don’t cause there is no direct line to God. No human being I have ever met has known anything outside of their environment. One can only mix and match experiences, ie. A unicorn, but this is nothing to do with thinking outside of evidence. There is more reason to believe in a unicorn then there is to believe in the Christian God.

Uccisore stated:

Read my previous posts words carefully and stop putting words in my mouth. I said that religion, to me, is the biggest form of brainwashing. This is a long way from saying that I believe that religion purposefully tries to brainwash people. Although I have heard strong arguments for that very notion. For example, I think TV is one of the biggest forms of brainwashing as well, so would you conclude that I am saying that TV actually tries to brainwash us? NO. Uccisore, I am not twisting anything, you need to pay more attention to my actual words and not what you think is behind them. Yes I previously argued that many religions teach “We as human beings are incapable of truly understanding God, but yet we know the following to be certainties about God…” - this I find to be a paradox and think that either you can know something certain about a thing or you can’t, if you don’t know something certain about a thing it is absurd to talk of it as certain. Because I believe that we cannot know anything certain about anything (everything is always changing) and because if you understand absolutely everything about one thing, it would enfold all knowledge to the universe. Ie. We would all say we know what a chestnut is. But what is a chestnut made of? How does this made of stuff come to be? What is the process? What makes the process? What are the constituents of the making of the process? Sooner or later you get down to atoms of the chestnut, then you get into protons, neutrons, electrons, and then into quarks…but there is much ambiguity surrounding quarks. If you could know everything about a chestnut, I mean everything, you would inevitably know everything about the universe because the chestnut is made of the same foundation as everything else in the universe. So since we can’t know certainty about anything, that includes God. But God, to me, is a human conception which is a thousand times more problematic than the study of atoms. So to me, God as a conception made from thousands of years ago by people in an area prone to creating Gods means that their God does not exist. Atleast not in the way they imagined it thousands of years ago. This is what it is not a twisting of words. It is quite logical to conclude that when you don’t have certainty about a thing, you can’t go around claiming it’s certainty.

Uccisore stated:

I’m not speaking about ALL, I’m talking about anything. There isn’t one thing we KNOW about God for certain. If you read my previous posts carefully you would have noticed that people are uncertain about the meaning of God’s supposed revelations to us and his existence. If he had, I don’t see how any of us could doubt it. The minute you know EVERYTHING about any one thing whether it’s a part of another complex thing or not, you know everything. This isn’t the case and why we can’t know any one thing about God for certain.

What’s your take?

That much is true. I talked with a Christian who claimed to have been visited by Jesus in the form of a rabbit, so I certainly can’t claim to know what’s going on in the mind of everyone who self-applies the term “Christian”. What I can comment on, though, is standard Christian theology, and standard Christian theology defeats your original claim that the Christian religion teaches that we should be

“believing in something we know not what, for the reason of believing.”

Christianity teaches nothing of the sort.

…which is what I’m addressing. The obvious meaning of the above isn’t really a paradox at all, it just says we can know some things about God and not others. The Church certainly does teach that. In order to re-interpret the above into something that is a genuine paradox or contradition, you’d have something that doesn’t resemble Christian teachings at all.
In other words, your original critique of religion was over-simplifying the issue to make absurdities appear where there actually are none, which was the point of my ‘stand up comic’ post.

Who’s ‘we’? Would you care to demonstrate this in a way that doesn’t contradict foundational teachings of Christianity, or if you must contradict them, can you show them to be false first? Christianity claims faith and divine revelation as sources of valid, certain knowledge.

First of all, thanks for the compliments, Q. I disagree that society should pretend God exists even if He doesn’t, but I’m afraid I don’t have much in the way of an argument for my position. I just have an intuition that a society ought to believe as many true things as possible, and reject as many false things as possible.

I would say it depends on what you mean by ‘matters’. If you mean strictly for salvific purposes, then I don’t really have any comment. However, I would say that having religious beliefs that are true (or at least coherent) is very very important, so to that extent what faith you are matters a great deal.

Yes, and believe me, most people don’t know… specially the religious people. Because there is no interest in the church to tell people what they’ve done. And the atrocities are very recent… Pope Pio XI is said to have helped the Nazis during the 2nd world war. My mothers, who’s historian/geographer was open mouthed when she heard about that… so little we know, so much still hidden…

Have you seen The Name of the Rose?
This is a very lame hypothesis, because, first, we will never know if those popes were good or bad people. Second, that means God could indeed influence in our world, so, free will and many other things (like poverty) would in fact be God’s ‘laziness’.
Still, there are many things happening that we don’t know…. And things we end up knowing a little more everyday… like many cases of pedophilia among priests.

I will agree with one thing. There are many good things about religion. One of them is morals and ethics… there are many good things about it. But still, the institution hardly follows what Jesus said… or even God (if there is any possible word coming from him). I actually am a ‘fan’ of Jesus, as I look at him as the 1st revolutionary, the 1st communist in the world. I don’t think he was God or ‘son’ of God, but he seems to have been a good person with good morals and wise words.
But then, people just DON’T follow the wise bit of religion. They are either hypocrites or weak… am speaking of the majority, not all of them.
There are so many reasons that are not the right ones for people to go to churches. None of them, not even the search for truth and guidance justify the bad things they do and did.
There is this case now in Britain about an archbishop that covered up a pedophiliac priest. Talking to my husband I said ‘how can anyone trust the church after such things?’… cos it see this as a betrayal of trust, and for me it’s the worst thing if could ever happen. Dishonesty in a place where you put your trust and heart is unforgivable.

I don’t agree with that. I never went to God for morals or ethics and from all the people I know, religious or not, I have more conscious or ethics and morals than any of them.

It does. Cos if everyone kill each other then there wouldn’t be a single leaving creature in the world.
You don’t need the church to tell you what is and what is not right.
The way you put is that we only behave the way we do because there is a punishment to it… So we act by fear, not by love. Like dogs… who fetch the ball to get a bone, of doesn’t pee in the living because it will sleep in the cold.
So all the talk about the world being created to love is rubbish and we only act morally by fear of punishment.

Again, there are more deaths in the name of God than any other thing… so seeing from this point of view, religious if worse than non-religion. Also, it is not God that I am against (even tho I don’t believe his existence) but the institutions created by man who proclaim it self as the only way to God… the righteous way to heaven… these kinda thing.

Funny isn’t it? It reminds me of a ad we had in the beginning of the 90s about AIDS. It went something like this:
‘Ana loves Paul, who loves Maria who loves Andy, who loves Jenny who loves Tom who died from AIDS’
It wanted to show how AIDS was spread…. Very good ad…. Nothing to do with the subjects, tho…

You are playing against yourself with this sentence. You are showing how absurd religion is… how can you support church morals saying ‘Isrealis commit genocide on the Palestinians’… ‘doesn’t matter that priests used little boys as objects’… religion is causing this so… it wouldn’t exist without it.

It is like hell… so maybe there is no God after all.

You can’t envision a world without it, i can. My world, personal world, doesn’t have God and I challenge you to find any priest or any religious authority who can prove themselves to be as ethic and as moral as I am.

Go back in history… not just what the church tells you to read about them… but what they don’t want you to read… and find out for yourself all the crimes and atrocities we wouldn’t have had, before saying that a world without God’s institutions would be a mayhem.

Check the Latin American indians. They had no churches or priests, or vicars or anything… they weren’t savage and had a extremely good relationship with nature. They knew nature would keep them alive, would help them… they need nature and they couldn’t control it. Religion makes man the omnipotent ruler of the world… we are sons of God… the best you can have on earth… very selfish.

The history of religion makes me sick… what it became makes me sick… all the alienation and conformist in the world comes from it.
If the Pope really believed in God he would sell the Vatican or turn it into a homeless shelter. He would give up his clothes, his mundane rules, and follow Jesus and God. But no… he is a hypocrite. He needs the Vatican, that imposed vision of God coming to earth through a huge expensive building… to make others feel less powerful.
I can’t express myself properly today… headaches. But I hope you can understand what I say. If not I will explain better… maybe a PM or different post.

hm…1984, well, you can be applied to religion. The big scary thing that watches you everywhere, every step you give… and it will punish you if you don’t do what you are told to do.
You say there is a natural law but not everyone uses…. Does every religious person uses they law of the church or Gods? As I said before… would the Pope give up the church’s wealth? I don’t remember Jesus owning anything…
And again… I don’t care AT ALL about what religion says… and I am yet to meet someone with or better morals than mine.

Is it? Right… wait… you are mixing things. If you say that God is superior, even tho I think it’s rubbish, I would accept for the simple fact that there are things we can’t explain and we end up calling it God,… but religion what created by man, and nothing created by man, and no creation can be superior than the creator itself… otherwise, we could be greater than God as well.
Religions are nothing but interpretations and misunderstandings of the nature of God and his purpose, if any. God didn’t create the church, God never said that the Pope should be his ‘voice’ on earth… this is a load of rubbish. Created by man to exploit other man, to cause them fear to call the masses down. A brainwash machine to beet the kettle moving along…

Right. I won’t deny that some people might be (think and act) like that. But the great majority isn’t.
I am NOT religious I DON’T believe in God… and I would give my life to what I believe in right… and that means end of human and animal exploitation, suffering and starvation. I wouldn’t give it for the doubt of ending it… am not stupid… but I would give it without asking anything back, not salvation, not heaven, not eternity… Now, I am being honest (most of you will doubt, but that cos you don’t know me and i can’t do much but give my word)… and I wish people would look into their hearts and see if they would give up their life to help people they’ve never seen. I wouldn’t judge a person who said ‘no, I wouldn’t do it’… it’s their life, their conscious… but from a religious person I wouldn’t accept a ‘no’ because if I, who know (to myself) that this is my only life, can do it, then a person who believes there is an after life and a God can do it too.

The church doesn’t do the ‘goodness’ they sell… I say, sell the churches! Feed the starving countries… if you do believe there is a God, then stop thinking that goodness is to help a lady cross the road…to give beggars food once a week, to give wine in a church and call it blood of Christ, to give boring sermons, to charge exorbitant quantities of money to marry people… stop being hypocrite and actually do what you believe, don’t just believe.

If people were to act like their religions, than maybe (MAYBE) the world would be a good place, and religion not so bad after all… but that’s not what happens.

Hey, uhh… I don’t know what your experiance has been with religion, but obviously it must have been an unpleasant one (Keep in mind I can only talk about Christianity). Religion isn’t supposed to be a big scarry thing. It isn’t about punishing people. God doesn’t have people behind street corners waiting to jump out screaming “Haha! I cought you, you heathen!!” It’s about accepting people as they are and working to bring them closer to God. If people were perfect and already lived according to how God wanted them to we wouldn’t very well need religion, now would we?

According to Catholocism every human person has the right to go to heaven. The only way you don’t is if you choose not to by intentionally sinning and not going to confession.

The Church makes no attempt to hide what it has done. Now think here a bit, the Pope, being in the middle of Italy, an axis power with Nazi’s all through it, couldn’t very wel speak out publically to oppose Hitler. It was more prudent to try and remain neutral. No one blames Switzerland for staying neutral. If you have evidence you could share to back up your claim I will most definatly look into it.

Really now, if he had spoken out against Hitler, what good would it have done? It would have spurred a persecution of Catholic clergy. Nothing would have happend but the death of thousands of priests.

Something I think it is interesting the media has failed to report is that the number of pedophiles in the priesthood is significantly smaller in Catholicism than in any other denomination. Also, the problem really emerged once homosexuals were being admited into the priesthood.

I don’t understand what you mean.

What do you mean “if the Pope really believed in God”? I don’t mean to be rude or offensive but there is no way around it: How stupid of a statement can you make?!? You have OBVIOUSLY not done your reseach on Pope John Paul II. I request that you do not speak so ignorantly of him again untill you ahve. He is perhaps one of the most humble people on the planet. He has never put on the image you are implying he does. To make others feel less powerful? What power does the Church have today?! We live in a secular world!! There are people who sell their clothes and etc, they are called Franciscans, perhaph you’ve heard of them? They were started by St. Francis of Assisi. If the Church sold all it’s wealth, firstly, how would it be able to support itself? Second, that would be all it could to. They would have nothing left to give. It can help more people now and in the long run byt doing what it is doing. I think you are forgetting all the charities and missionaries the Church supports. You are making the Church out like a Morman would: as the whore of Babylon.

Again, think of all the Church does for people. There are people in Africa right now working in comunities stricken with AIDS. There are hopspitals in third world countries that run on a $5,000 budget or less a year. Schools with 3000 students running one $1,000 a year. These people work for nothing.

How dare you speak of the Holy Eucharist. We do not ‘serve wine’ and ‘call it’ the blood of Christ.

I do agree on the sermons. There is a spiritual crisis in the Church right now, all major Catholic publifications agree on that. There are reforms begining to get under way in the Church right now.

The Popes I’m refering to were pope during times of corruption during the Church and there is, as a matter of fact, evidence that they tried to work the Church to fit their own means. What I’m refering to also happened during a short period of time. Call it a coincidence if you want, but it seems a little to much to be one.

I agree with you here. That is a pretty strong representation of love but I didn’t learn that from religion; I got it from overly dramatic movies.

Are you suggesting Christ’s death as an example? What did he save me from? If I were Jesus and I knew that I could be chillin’ at the right hand of the Creator of the Universe, I would have died too. Who wants to be hanging out here on earth when Heaven is where the party is at?

Oh yeah, but he had to spend three days in Hell. (Not really three when you do the math, just two. . .) I’m guessing that sucks but at least he didn’t have to spend eternity there like the rest of us. So what exactly is the big deal about Christ’s sacrifice? What is the significance?

I only wish this were so, Qzxtvbzr. I really wish that the Christian God were benevolent. I really wish that the wonderful. God that you speak of were real, but you must face reality. God is either dead or evil.

Don’t take offense to my words. Take offense to reality. You read Polemarchus’ thread on the theory of a benevolent God. How can you argue with that? Your reply was ‘When all else fails, resort to pascal’s wager.’ I am guessing that you wrote that because you saw the logic in Polemarchus’ argument. Am I right? When all else fails resort to Pascal’s Wager. I only wish it were that easy.

Since there’s no way you could come close to proving that, you probably ought to say “God is probably either dead or evil”, or if you prefer, “It’s irrational to believe there is a God”.

Hehe… why do you think that? I have no religion experience whatsoever. I’ve never went to church on Sundays, never listened a sermon (well I did when I went to church with my hubby’s family, he is Lutheran btw)… I used to pray when I was a child with my granny at night and I remember being very scared of a Christ image that he had on the wall. They used to say I should be a nice girl cos God was always looking to us. For some reason I’ve always had strong morals to the point I was embarrassed of taking a shower cos God would see me naked hehe, but I was about 4 or 5 years old at the time. About the same time my dod died and I was told it wasn’t going to heaven because only humans could go to heaven, dogs were going to another heaven… I was very upset cos I wanted to go to the same one. Well, hehe, we all have out dodge experiences when we are kids. I wouldn’t consider it a religious experience… I was just a very curious child.

Well, religion has its rules and if you don’t follow them you will be punished somehow. I believe that many people go to religion for selfish reason. Like those who want to be saved… or those that only turn to God when they are old… because they can’t face the end of existence. I am not saying they don’t really believe in it, they do, but it is selfish.

Then you aren’t accepting them the way they are, you want them to be just like you are, you want to change them.

If God gave us free will, why do we need to live according to what he wanted us to? Is so, there wouldn’t be free will at all.

Poor animals, thought God also created them.
What is to ‘intentionally sin’? What is sin anyway?
Confession is pathetic, especially in Catholicism. I don’t see the point of talking to a priest with you can talk directly to God…. Also, if I have sex outside my marriage 1000 times and I confess 1000 times I will go to heaven, if I never confess I am not going to heaven.

How do you know? If they hide it well, we probably will never know…

Not ‘speak out publically’ is very different then helping the nazis.

Which he didn’t. And still,… prudent? He had an obligation to act morally if he is the man who all the Catholic churches go to on earth. Some pleople count of him to give guidence to their lives! He should be the first to point out atrocities against human beings. He is very good to speak what you should and shouldn’t do, but when he has to act morally in the name of his principles and beliefs… he decides to be ‘prudent’. Very convenient.

Switzerland is a country, not a religion. People don’t follow Switzerlandism, do they?
I haven’t got any evidences… but John Cornwell has some in ‘Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII’. (sorry, I said XI in my last post, it’s actually XII)

Of course not! Hitler was very catholic himself to persecute the clergy. And what good he would have done?! For f*** sake, he was the POPE, it was his obligating to go against human suffering, but instead he contributed to the fate of the Jews under the Nazis in his sympathetic dealings with Hitler as papal nuncio to Germany throughout the 20s.

I see… so priests can’t die in Nazi hands, but ordinary people can…
You don’t understand… he HELPED the Nazis… not simple ignored the atrocities.

Doesn’t matter what religion it is, it does happen and it shouldn’t and wouldn’t if there was no religion.

are you saying that homosexuals are pedophiliacs?
And, please, give me evidences and statistics on this matter.
Wouldn’t be a good thing for the church to accuse homos to be pediphiliacs in the 1st place?
To my view they can only abuse boys because there are only boys to be abused. Also, to prevent yourself to have sex is not natural. Priests are like bombs about to explode.

You said ‘Isrealis commit genocide on the Palestinians’ & ‘doesn’t matter that priests used little boys as objects’ to defend religion… but as far as I can see… no Jews, not genocide, no Muslims, no reason to kill them, no Catholics, no child abuse by priests… So, we conclude that none of this would happen is there was no religion.

Right… wrong word. If they followed God/Jesus’ words.

Remind me again where he lives… not a humble home I would say. I don’t remember Jesus living like the Pope does…. Actually, I don’t see many people living in such place. So I think he is a hypocrite.

Enough to have a country of the own, and be the richest institution in the world. That’s the catholic church… now Jews also have a country and Muslims have many. Do you know what a town needs to become a city… a cathedral. What is written in a dollar note? I’m God we trust’. Why to be gay is wrong? Religions morals. That’s enough evidence of power to me…

Matter of fact, I heard of Assisi. Am not saying EVERY one is evil… am I?
My point is that the goodness of the church and all religious institutions are not enough compared to their atrocities. I don’t see why 10 lives worth more than 1 life. To the one who’s gonna suffer/die, it worth everything.

It wouldn’t.

hm…Missionaries forced people (specially indians) into Catholicism… they covered the indians bodies because they were naked, they imposed their beliefs to others. But as much as I can’t see the good things you can’t see the bad things.
They do charities, I can’t deny that… but they could do better if there was no just HUGE and expensive buildings and paintings and images. And actually who give to charity are not the institution but the people.

You can do such work without churches… and there are many who do. Many organizations, many groups and many charities which have nothing to do with churches.

Well, I am free to speak, I am afraid, according to what I’ve seen. And what I saw was wine and what they called was blood. Is not like I was offending anyone as I don’t see it as anything but a ceremony, a representation. If i can’t speak of that, then we can’t speak of God at all, for i refer to him is the same way. You should feel offended by the way i talk about God also then…

The church can’t committee any crime, EVER, as they are supposed to be the thing closest to god for us mortals… all the goodness can’t justify the atrocities… and atrocities committed by religious authorities, not some thick nuts who said God asked him to kill people.
If people really believe in God then there is no need to go to churches. There is no need to confess for your God is not in the church, he is everywhere. If you need help, search it in yourself, if you need confessing, if that takes the guilty out of your body… you can do it anywhere are any time with not need of a priest. If u believe in God, then you wouldn’t sin… so why do u need a chuch to tell you what sin is and what it’s not?
God is not the church and the church is far from being God or the messenger of God.

Damnit!!! I had a whole post!!! A looooooooong post in reply and I answered everything but I disconected when I pressed ‘submit’ now it’s lost! noooooooooooo!

I worked for like an hour and a half on it!!

Qzxtvbzr,
I know the feeling. I’ve done the same many times. Take a break and retype it tomorrow.

Cle,

Your answers were superb! I had to laugh out loud at a few of them. I am behind you 100% on this topic. I just can’t imagine how the Catholic Church has lasted so long. It just doesn’t make any sense!

I couldn’t have said it better myself. This is the perfect response! So our goal in life is to follow Christ, and conform our will to the will of God, right? We eventually get to heaven where we become sanctified and free of sin as well as being in complete accordance with God’s will.

In fact, in heaven our will and God’s will are one in the same. So that means that in Heaven, we are completely God controlled, without Free Will? So where is our identity? or have we just become one with God? I think I’d rather go to Hell.

Speaking of Hell. What’s so bad about Hell? Why would the Devil want to torture his followers? I would think that Hell would actually be more like a big party. Am I right?

The Devil, wouldn’t say, “hahaha . . . Now I get to punish you for eternity for doing my work and helping me out on Earth.”

It would be more likely that he would say, “Here Skeptic , have a cold one for carrying out my work so well on Earth. You did a wonderful job, so enjoy your eternity in Hell, free from the relentless rules of the big guy upstairs!”

Imagine, no more patronizing religious people to bother me. In fact, I almost wish Hell were real. It sounds a like a lot of fun.

Haha, heaven doesn’t want you, but hell’s afraid you’d take over?

Qzx,
I too have made the same mistake. What I do now is high-light my post when I am done writing it, click copy, and then click submit. That way, if I get disconnected, I simply go back, click reply and paste. I haven’t lost a post since.

Hope this helps.

Man, that’s a bummer Q. Luckily, I haven’t had to type anything quite that long here yet. Thanks for the warning, though!

Q,
You probably noticed i quote people a lot to reply the posts, so i have to sure Word, as i keep reading the posts while typing. Then you copy and past to the forum. Is the best way, i believe… and it keeps you from committing too many spelling mistakes hehe (i am dyslexic, you see… too many mistakes)

If hell exists, i hope you are right… i see hell as a place where you can’t do anything you would like to do, full of stupid rules and unjust, full of silly people and rude bastards who always what to take advantage of everything… and I would have to work the whole day in something i hate… wait… sounds like my life already! Oh bugger…

I do the exact same thing, Magius. In fact, in some cases I will do similar to Cle and copy it to notepad or Word, just in case something drastic happens.

It sounds as if you are describing Hell as being inhabited with fundamental Christians. Besides, why would the devil want to cause you any strife? Remember he is against God, and God is the one who wants to punish you. The devil would rather spite God and reward you for being on his side. It only makes logical sense to me. I feel sorry for the Christians though. They have to spend eternity in Heaven where they will be perfect. Yes, the bible says that in Heaven everyone will be perfect so that means that all Heaven goers will automatically conform to the will of God. A complete theocracy!!! Sounds like a pretty poor way to spend eternity. Can anyone argue against me here?

 Argue against your opinion? How? I can't very well show an argument refuting the notion that 'fundamental Christians are silly people and rude bastards', nor is there a de facto argument against  'a theocracy is a poor way to spend eternity'. These statements are too completely subjective to have a good response.  I do see a single sentence which may be 'argued', though, and that's the one about the devil wanting to reward people because it makes logical sense.  I think it's a wasted claim, considering these two things: 

a) Other than in cartoons, Satan actually isn’t depicted as being in charge of punishing anyone, so asking ‘why would the devil want to cause you any strife’ is kind of an empty question.
b) Why is it logical that satan would want to reward someone for their service? There must be a thousand other ways to spite God. Drawing ‘logical’ conclusions about a being’s future behavior requires knowledge about that being’s personality that we just don’t have.

The above was me, BTW.

Hehe… maybe it is. But not only fundamental Christians… I would add all religions there.

But he is pure evil. He doesn’t care if you ‘helped’ him… that the point. The is dishonest, unfair… and you will suffer for the eternity under his tortures.
But if you see Devil as an opposition to God, and there is not good or evil, only 2 sides of the same coin… then I agree… hell, heaven… who cares?

Have you read a play called No Exit by J-P Sartre? It deals with 4 people who go to hell… but it is actually a room where they gonna spent their eternity together. The thing is, the place is nice, but they end up hating each other… so actually, is the everlasting annoyance that is hell.
So, probably your hell would be full of religious fundamentalists, my hell would be full of wasps and other flying insects, no books, no papers to draw on or write… oh, and I would probably be shoeless and the floor would be all dirty. Uccisore’s hell would be full of gay people showing off their gayness, and people like you and I trying to prove him God is actually evil or that there is no God, only hell… whatever.
Each person has their own hell, but we also have our heaven, but that’s in life… if you are no good, then you will go to your hell and stay there forever. So in the end, we shouldn’t dislike anything or anyone… or else, we will end up with them for the eternity. Hehe… great.

I do apologize for interrupting the discussion at this point, but I wish to share something with Uccisore of a topic we were discussing in the recent past. I think it worthwhile for all to read, so your time will not be spent in vain.

But first a note:

Skeptic stated:

I too use notepad to write posts, but I don’t write them in Notepad because something drastic might happen, instead I use Notepad for really long quotes - cause it is really annoying to keep scrolling down and then up in the REPLY screen. So I write it in notepad and then just copy and paste.

Uccisore, in our deliberations of God and why I don’t believe in any religions conception of God, specifically the Christian one, I have been elucidating in vain. I think maybe that I have expressed myself in an awkward manner, so in an attempt to further illustrate my point, I advert you to some text written by Baruch Spinoza (philosopher) who I found, coincidentally, to have a very similar view to mine. Actually, I was studying for an exam (were taking up Spinoza) and I read past what was listed to know and found to my surprise some views that I agree with. I say this because about 95% of everything we took up from Spinoza, for me, was like nails on a chalk board. I just simply disagreed with him on almost everything. I hope what you will find what you read to be a more concise and coherent version of my argument a dozen or so posts back…

"…It will suffice at this point if I take as my basis what must be universally admitted, that all men are born ignorant of the causes of things, that they all have a desire to seek their own advantage, a desire of which they are conscious. From this it follows, firstly, that men believe that they are free, precisely because they are conscious of their volitions and desires; yet concerning the causes that have determined them to desire and will they have not the faintest idea, because they are ignorant of them. Secondly, men act always with an end in view, to wit, the advantage that they seek. Hence it happens that they are always looking only for the final causes of things done, and are satisfied when they find them, having, of course, no reason for further doubt. But if they fail to discover them from some external source, they have no recourse but to turn to themselves, and to reflect on what ends would normally determine them to similar actions, and so they necessarily judge other minds by their own. Further, since they find within themselves and outside themselves a considerable number of means very convenient for the pursuit of their own advantage-as, for instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, cereals and living creatures for food, the sun for giving light, the sea for breeding fish-the result is that they look on all things of Natureas a means to their own advantage. And realising that these were found, not produced by them, they came to believe that there is someone else who produced these means for their use. For looking on things as means, they could not believe them to be self-created, but on the analogy of the means which they are accustomed to produce for themselves, they were bound to conclude that there was some governor or governors of Nature, endowed with human freedom, who have attended to al their needs and made everything for their use. And having no information on the subject, they also had to estimate the character of these rulers by their own and so they asserted that the gods direct everything for man’s use so that they may bind men to them and be held in the highest honour by them. So it came about that every individual devised different methods of worshipping God as he thought fit in order that God should him beyond others and direct the whole of Nature so as to serve his blind cupidity and insatiable greed. Thus it was that this misconception developed into superstition and became deep-rooted in the minds of men, and it was for this reason that every man strove most earnestly to understand and to explain the final causes of all things. But in seeking to show that nature does nothing in vain-that is, nothing is not to man’s advantage-they seem to have shown only this, that Nature and the gods are as crazy as mankind.
Consider, I pray, what has been the upshot. Among so many Nature’s blessings they were bound to discover quite a number of disasters, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases and so forth, and they maintained that these occurred because the Gods were angry at the wrongs done to them by men, or the faults committed in the course of their worship. And although daily experience cried out against this and showed by any number of examples that blessings and disasters befall the godly and ungodly alike without discrimination, they did not on that account abandon their ingrained prejudice. For they found it easier to regard this fact as one among other mysteries they could not understand and thus maintain their present and innate condition of ignorance rather than to demolish in its entirety the theory they had constructed and devise a new one. Hence they made it axiomatic that the judgment of the gods is far beyond man’s understanding…

…And so they will go on and on asking the causes of causes, until you take refuge in the will of God-that is, the sactuary of ignorance…

…As a result, he who seeks the true causes of miracles and is eager to understand the works of Nature as a scholar, and not just to gape at them like a fool, is universally considered an impious heretic and denounced by those to whom the common people bow down as interpreters of Nature and the gods. For these people know that the dispelling of ignorance would entail the disappearance of that sense of awe which is the one and only support for their argument and for the safeguarding of their authority…

…When men became convinced that everything that is created is created on their behalf, they were bound to consider as the most important quality in every individual thing that which was most useful to them, and to regard as of the highest excellence al lthose things by which they were most benefited. Hence they came to form these abstract notions to explain the natures of things: -Good, Bad, Order, Confusion, Beauty, Ugliness, and since they believe that they are free, the following abstract notionns came into being: - Praise, Blame, Right, Wrong…

…All that conduces to well-being and to the worship of God they call Good, and the contrary, Bad. And since those who do not understand the nature of things, but only imagine things, make no affirmative judgments about things themselves and mistake their imagination for intellect, they are firmly convinced that there is order in things, ignorant as they are of things and of their own nature. For when things are in such arrangement that, being presented to us through our senses, we can readily picture them and thus readily remember them, we say that they are well arranged; if the contrary, we say that they are ill-arranged, or confused. And since those things we can readily picture we find pleasing compared with other things, men prefer order to confusion, as though order were something in Nature other than what is relative to our imagination. And they say that God has created all things in an orderly way, without realising that they are thus attributing human imagintion to God-unless perchance they mean that God, out of consideration for the human imagination, arranged all things in the way that men could most easily imagine. And perhaps they will find no obstacle in the fact that there are any number of things that far surpass our imagination, and a considerable number that confuse the imagination because of its weakness…

…All this goes to show that everyone’s judgment is a function of the disposition of his brain, or rather, that he mistakes for reality the way his imagination is affected. Hence it is no wonder-as we should not in passing-that we find so many controversies arising among men, resulting finally in scepticisim. For althoug human bodies agree in many respects, there are very many differences, and so one man thinks good what another thinks bad; what to one man is well-ordered, to another is confused; what to one is pleasing, to another is displeasing, and so forth…"

Source: Spinoza, Baruch. The Ethics, Part I, Appendix.

What’s your take?

I always get a little wary when famous professionals are borught into a conversation, just because it does feel wrong to criticize what someone obviously wiser and more experienced than me has said. Nevertheless, I take comfort in the fact that wiser and more experienced people than me have also sided with me about things, so I’ll guess I’ll make a few comments.
Firstly, belief in something can be attacked in two ways: It can be said that a belief is not true, (that’s called de facto, right?) or it can be said that it is unreasonable to accept a belief (de jure).
It’s clear that Spinoza isn’t trying to form an argument that there is no God, or that Jesus never existed, or any other issue of fact. Spinoza seems to be saying that the origins of religious belief are psychological and self-serving, and thus cannot be considered reliable.
However, what Spinoza has described here has very little to do with how a modern religious believer gets their beliefs. The origins of some religions may very well be just what Spinoza describes, but I certainly don’t know anybody that came up with the idea of “God” as an explanation to what goes on around them- we’re taught way to much science at an early age for anyone to do this. If his argument, then, doesn’t say that modern religious believers get their faith from an unreliable source, then it must be saying that those beliefs are probably false (that it, if Spinoza’s words are a critique of religion at all). I simply don’t see how the passage above accomplishes that, though. Even if there was some mechanism in the human psyche that made religious beliefs happen, that’s certainly not a reason to think that no religious belief is true. All that’s left is a claim that since religions originate from unreliable sources, all current religious belief must also be unreliable. I don’t think that’s a strong argument at all.
My second problem with his claim is a little more basic. Every claim he’s made here about religion could also be applied to the sciences, philosophy, and every other human endeavor- that is, if naturalism is true. Of course, this means that if religious beliefs are unreliable because they come from self-serving and naturalistic sources, then Spinoza’s own claims are unreliable for exactly the same reason. I would say Spinoza’s argument is self-defeating then, unless he accepts universal skepticism.

“The Kingdom of God is inside you and it is outside you…”
“Split a piece of wood, and I am there…”
“Lift up the stone and there you will find me…” (The Gospel of Thomas)