Sigh, my gf is now bhuddist...

mrk said:
Hey!

America is more religious than the UK though which was why I used them as an example. How many times has our PM mentioned god in any of his public appearances? Now look at how many times Senators over there do the same.

I know it doesn’t have the same motion since America is much larger than us but they’re one of the biggest influence on the world these days
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I disagree - I think the problem of anti-social youths and moral degradation is due i large part to the widening wealth gap and loss of social mobility in this country, and America is much the same. Hell, 1% of their population is in prison and most of their large cities are surrounded by what basically amount to shanty towns! They're not a model society in terms of moral values and behaviour no matter how vocal the religious extreme is or how big the bible-belt is.
 
drunkenmaster said:
EVERYTHING would get very very boring, after 2-300 years you'd have simply done everything, you'd be an expert in every sport, science, everything, you'd have nothing left to do and be basically unable to die and bored for the rest of time.
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Mmm I've often thought something similar.

But I guess it's better than spending eternity burning to death without actually dying, but in constant searing pain...
...Mind you if you have a good read of the Bible it doesn't really mention a Hell.

Which is a fine thing - it means that in a Christian world, everyone who believes and repents gets to go to heaven, and those who don't believe or repent (you'd be a fool to actually believe in God/Jesus and still not be sorry for your sins, surely?) just wink out of existence...
 
Monkey Puzzle said:
I disagree - I think the problem of anti-social youths and moral degradation is due i large part to the widening wealth gap and loss of social mobility in this country, and America is much the same. Hell, 1% of their population is in prison and most of their large cities are surrounded by what basically amount to shanty towns! They're not a model society in terms of moral values and behaviour no matter how vocal the religious extreme is or how big the bible-belt is.
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Ok I can fully accept that the wealth factor does play a large part in it but you also need to see that those people in particular don’t have, or were not brought up with, an exposure to a particular faith whatever it is (after all, all major religions aim to get their followers on the same path).

It’s worth noting though not all people in poorer communities end up bad, because of their faith they live reasonable lives without causing a mess for the rest of society.

I guess they are both required for a society to reasonably work in this regard.
 
sara said:
But I guess it's better than spending eternity burning to death without actually dying, but in constant searing pain...
...Mind you if you have a good read of the Bible it doesn't really mention a Hell.
.
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That's something that does amaze me about some faiths. You have a utterly loving God, yet you burn in hell for eternity. As you point out the bible does really say it anyway. But also you have churches that you know where changed to allow divorces and lots of other stuff. But people still follow these.
 
mrk said:
Ok I can fully accept that the wealth factor does play a large part in it but you also need to see that those people in particular don’t have, or were not brought up with, an exposure to a particular faith whatever it is (after all, all major religions aim to get their followers on the same path).

It’s worth noting though not all people in poorer communities end up bad, because of their faith they live reasonable lives without causing a mess for the rest of society.

I guess they are both required for a society to reasonably work in this regard.
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Sure, I wasn't suggesting all poorer people end up as criminals, just that for a supposedly religious country America isn't very charitable and sure does have a lot of criminals, murder and poverty. Yessiree.
 
It's no worse than other countries really.
We only hear about them all the time because they're so exposed to the media.

Look at North Korea or China for example, I'd bet much worse happens that we just don't hear about.
 
mrk said:
Are you saying that religion helps us look at our morals for what is right and wrong?

If so then yes it does but even without religion there would still be an understanding of what is right and wrong.
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Personally, I look at our attempts to differentiate between "right" and "wrong" and infer some of my beliefs from them.

Think about it, what possible evolutionary advantage is there for risking your own life to save a stranger? What about arguments about decency and rights? We all attempt to adhere to some sort of moral code, whether we realise it or not. Where does this moral code come from? What's the point in it? I don't claim that this exists as a result of "religion", but that it's a major reason to look for some way of explaining it.
 
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America actually put their criminals in jail for a decent sentence (quite often, obviously people get off on technicalities and pretending to be rehabilitated), they aren't scared of building new jails and don't refuse to build them due to cost reasons and simply let people out for no reason and get crappy sentences against the most evil of criminals like some other countries.

What american cities have shanty towns outside them by the way? Having been to multiple cities in America, and driven into and out of them, I've yet to have seen a shanty town.
 
p4radox said:
personally, I look at our attempts to differentiate between "right" and "wrong" and infer some of my beliefs from them.

Think about it, what possible evolutionary advantage is there for risking your own life to save a stranger? What about arguments about decency and rights? We all attempt to adhere to some sort of moral code, whether we realise it or not. Where does this moral code come from? What's the point in it? I don't claim that this exists as a result of "religion", but that it's a major reason to look for some way of explaining it.
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Yes and no, in terms of evolution, you might not help a stranger, but you might put your life at risk to save someone in your family, or tribe or village so your "group" doesn't lose whatever help that guy provides. At some point there would have been not much reason to help people who wouldn't effect you in any way and religion probably did help reduce crime/murder rates by trying to scare people into not beating other people to death for the sake of it.

At the end of the day, morality or not, it doesn't really matter if you kill someone, thats the honest truth, if I go to Russia and kill a guy come back here, it simply doesn't matter. Morality is kind of instilled through religion over the centuries which isn't a terrible thing, I'm not to sure that the downturn of religion isn't massively to blame for increasing crime. At the end of the day, when civilisation got big enough that to work smoothly we really needed to not spend out time on wars and spend it more on working to build things thats when we, to a degree, stopped randomly killing each other. A society where you can get to work and do your job really needs that assurance that you won't be randomly attacked.

Screw it, i thought there was some point I was building to, but I guess thats the end thing, there is no point. There isn't a real reason to care for everyone, or protect everyone. Its a nicer life when you don't have to worry about it, but not right or wrong tbh. Its not like we still don't fight wars anyway.

I guess its not far off, treat others how you want to be treated, religion was a good excuse to scare those others who made life worse for everyone, the worst of the worst people just use it as an excuse to fight other people. Without religion they'd just be finding other reasons to attack other groups of people.
 
mcast123 said:
I'm 100% athiest, we don't talk about religion at all, but now she's started yakking on about "Lama Sumati Marut- aka Brian K. Smith". The main problem is she won't shut up about it, I couldn't care less what "god" someone believes in, just don't tell me about it.

As I'm willing to educate myself, I listened to an hour of his chat and it confirmed to me the flaw in all religions (humans make then up to feel better).

As religions go, bhuddism isn't bad, but now I have to listen to her "he's such an inspiration" all night. Sx is now off the menu, as we are constantly arguing. She has an IQ of 150+, which I thought would make her immune to this BS.

:mad:
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tbh you sound like an arse. Finish it then.
 
If you ever actually read some of the stories about the guy (buddha? what was he called in real life?) he does sound like a stand up kind of guy. Philosopher that said you could measure humanity in aging, disease and death... pretty profound. Sometimes you have to seperate the "religion" part of something (mantras/rituals/repetition/dodgy superstitous stuff) from the really interesting stuff, because it is often has some truth.

I'm agnostic, for the record, pro-choice, pro-tolerance. I'd be athiest but I have some weird ideas of my own, possibly for another thread...
 
Yes, but by telling all of us the thing you live by, you're not keeping your ideas to yourself, thus, failing at the only thing you live by.
 
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