Entry 1879, on 2017-10-02 at 21:18:26 (Rating 4, Religion)
Occasionally I like to discuss some of my favourite quotes, usually from figures from science, history, philosophy, etc whom I admire to some extent. It has been a while since I did one of these, so let's have a look at a few good quotes I have seen recently...
Here's the first one. Quote 1: "The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion." - Arthur C. Clarke.
I don't think that religion should be totally rejected as a potential source of ideas around morality, in the same way as I would not reject fiction as a source. But the idea that religion is *the* source is absurd, insulting, and dangerous.
It's absurd because all the main religions of the world have been found to be hopelessly inadequate in their truth claims. it is insulting because very moral people can be shut-down just because they don't follow a particular religion. And it's dangerous because people stop thinking about what is really true when they surrender their critical thought processes to a religion.
Additionally, different religions, and even different sects within large religions like Christianity, have quite different ideas on what is moral and what isn't. The fact that many of these groups feel justified in killing each other over these, sometimes quite trivial, differences indicates that their overall claim to be the guardians of moral standards is questionable.
And religions have given support to many ideas in the past that we would now consider immoral, such as slavery, lack of equality for women, rejection of contraception and abortion, and many others. In fact, even today religions have far too much influence and hold back moral progress when they try to impose their doubtful moral standards on both their own members and others.
Just one last point on this before I move on. The tired old strategy the believers use when they say "how can we have morals without a god to impose them" is totally ridiculous. First, morality could easily be seen as an emergent property of the behaviour of a highly social species. Second, if a god created moral standards we would expect them to be more consistent amongst religions and not to change over time. And third, even if a god was required (one isn't) how does this relate to the childish fairy stories which are human religions?
On a related subject, I present quote 2: "So it's not God's fault for all the evil and bad things? Oh really? I form the light and create darkness, I make peace and create evil. I the Lord, do all these things. (Isaiah 45:7)" - Anonymous
This one relates quite well to a recent debate I had on my blog with a religious believer. He thought his god was justified in torturing good people (like me) with eternal torment in Heil just because we couldn't believe in the god's existence. He is a good person, and he didn't like this "fact", but he still insisted on worshipping a god who is clearly immoral and evil.
How anyone could think that any religion which included this disgusting belief has any relevance whatsoever to morality is beyond me. And the fact that it is all fantasy and Hell doesn't exist is irrelevant, because these people would clearly be OK with any real torture for unbelievers as well.
Remember that all of this comes from the New Testament, the alleged teachings of Jesus, who supposedly espoused peace and forgiveness. It might sound very moral on the surface, but dig a bit and it's the same old crap as every other religion.
So having demonstrated how grossly immoral religion is, let's move on to how stupidly fictitious it is as well. Here's quote 3: "Science: Many different people study many different sources and arrive at the same conclusions. Religion: Many different people study the same source and arrive at many different conclusions." - Anonymous.
Of course, this cannot be taken too literally because there are disagreements in science, even over the same data, and there is some degree of agreement amongst religions, but the general principle is sound.
Science tends to converge on an agreed conclusion, but religion tends to split into more divergent ideas. For example, several theories on the origin of our universe have been tested and found lacking until the Big Bang was developed and is now fairly universally accepted. But at the same time religion has split into a number of mutually exclusive, irrational ideas. Even within Christianity there is a range from Biblical literalism to complete acceptance of science, and everything in between. And none of these are really based on any religious evidence, apart from Creationism of course, which is the one most obviously wrong!
Note that the agreed science, such as the Big Bang, is not always the complete truth, but because it is based on real observations it is always a good approximation to reality. Religion on the other hand rarely has any relevance to anything in the real world at all. It is just completely irrelevant as a source of knowledge.
I have a cartoon in my collection showing a man watching TV news with the following caption (AKA quote 4): "Atheists rioted in the streets worldwide today, reacting to a Danish cartoon depicting nobody with a bomb on top of his head."
This is a reference to the Danish Muslim cartoons which caused riots and at least 200 deaths worldwide in 2005. The point is that it takes a strong belief system for people to become so irrationally violent over something so trivial. As an atheist I just have a bit of a laugh at any cartoon mocking atheism, although I might feel compelled to point out why it's wrong.
I know that today most religions might protest any perceived insult, but would not generally indulge in violence. It's usually Islam which uses violence in these situations today, but Christianity was at least as bad in the past. But the point is that if you don't believe in fairy tales you won't feel so inclined towards violence to defend them.
Here's quote 5: "The difference between a cult and a religion: In a cult there is a person at the top who knows it's a scam. In a religion, that person is dead." - Anon
All religions are scams because that is a requirement for a religion to survive. Unless a belief system has a mechanism to ensure its proliferation it will die out. That's why many people compare religion to a virus of the mind. It's like a living organism feeding off a host to ensure its own survival.
Then there's quote 6, which is another cartoon which shows a sign outside of a church with the following text: "Gather together to shout down your doubts. Sunday 10-11."
I really think this is true. Most belief systems require some sort of reinforcement over time to ensure their followers remain loyal. Regular meetings with like-minded people must be a significant element in keeping people trapped.
Finally, here's quote 7. I saw this on Twitter, and it's a tweet from God, who says: "Stop praying. I'm clearly not listening." - God
Now I do have to admit that this probably isn't really God, but he makes a good point I think. I have another quote which says "nothing fails like prayer" and it's true. Imagine all the people in poor countries who have signed up to the religions (especially Christianity) introduced by European invaders over the past few hundred years. These people are often afflicted by natural and man-made disasters and they must offer a lot of prayers for help. And what do they get? Nothing. Or at least nothing beyond what the normal laws of chance would dictate. No, apparently God really isn't listening.
So those are my quotes for this post. They prove nothing in themselves, but I think they are effective ways to communicate the bigger truth behind the simple facades. That truth is that religion is just immoral, irrational BS.
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