[quote]Sloth wrote:
Cockney Blue wrote:
I can and I will deny it. Yet, you didn’t, really. The law and order brought people together, the fact that most groups chose to dress up the law and order as being orders from God might indicate a necessary evolutionary stepbut that’s saying law and order were provided through religions or it might indicate a block that slowed development.
“Might.”
However, there is only one path history did take, no? Where were/are the great shining atheist societies? Why didn’t atheism suffice? Why did law and order have to be “dressed up?”
Without having an available control group that had no religion it is hard to tell.
That lack of, might speak to something.
As for calling Stalinism etc Atheist, that is hardly a cop out. Just because you have a living God that you have to worship instead of an invisible one, doesn’t mean that it is not a religion.
Cop out. You might as well say “just because (insert any thing you can possibly think of) doesn’t mean that it is not a religion.” Big boss has people killed, it’s a religion. Though, if he doesn’t, he worships peace? So, that too is religion?.
Kill for freedom? You worship freedom, thus it’s a religion. Kill for tyranny? You worship tyranny, therefore, a religion. Kill to defend yourself? You worship yourself, thus you’re religious.
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I guess the argument would come down to what you define as a religion. If you need a supreme supernatural power for it to be a religion then no, Stalinism is not a religion, if you define a religion as a system where iy force people not to think critically or question their leaders and to just obey without question then it is a religion.
The real point is that Stalin, Mao etc didn’t kill because of their atheism, Stalin went up against the church because it had power, not because of its beliefs.
Your other point is that most systems throughout history have been based on a religion to drive their laws, therefore religion must be right and needed (unless I have missunderstood you) to this I would say, look to the future.
The fact that flawed systems in the past were based on relgion doesn’t ipso facto prove relgion correct or neccessary. There does appear to be something within human pattern recognition and social capabilities that gives us a tendency whilst looking for explanations to anthropamorphise and claim a higher power. It would also appear that we are growing out of those tendencies as our undertsanding of the world increases.
Earlier religions had a separate god that explained everything from driving the sun accross the sky in a chariot to having the stars being jewels sewn into a dress.
When the harvest failed, this was due to an angry God, when someone got sick, this was due to a devil that had got into them.
As our understanding increased, we pushed Gods to the margins and for many we morphed Gods into a single God who becomes the winder of the Universe Clock and little more.
So you say that the lack of might speak to something and I say yes it does, it speaks to human nature. But for me (and an increasing number of other people) I am not prepared to accept God did it as an explanation for any gap in current understanding, I want everyone to strive to continue to push back the boundaries and I draw my comfort from my friends, my family and myself. I do not believe in any god because I see no need for there to be a god.
I accept that this is not proof that there is not a god, of course I may be wrong but then given that everyone’s religion is personal and everyones belief is slightly different, I would be in company with virtually every person who has ever lived in my wrongness.