The God Questions

[INDY500]

Inversely proportionate to the influence religion has had on any of those aspects you mentioned. If not for the Enlightenment, we'd still be toiling in the mud that was the religiously centered middle ages.

Those markers I mentioned were progressing well before the Enlightenment. Common Law, the Reformation (although things got a little bloody after that), advances in astronomy and mathematics, the founding of universities throughout Europe, Colonialism in America and the Renaissance just to name but a few. But notice:

1) It was Western Civilization that gave rise to the Enlightenment,

2) Compare the Enlightenment Age American Revolution which was informed by the writings of John Locke and the Great Awakening and thusly religion and the importance of faith was an animating force against the Jean-Jacques Rousseau informed French Revolution -- the godless antithesis to the founding of the United States.

One had the Liberty Bell, the other the guillotine. Only one produced a lasting constitution and 235 years of peaceful transfers of power.

Good to see you back, Indy.

Thank you.

 

[Cactus Annie]

I don't like having anyone shoving their ideology down my throat. No shit, blowing up abortion clinics, suicide bombers, etc are far worse than someone preaching at me. I am also well aware of the fact that there aren't numerous accounts throughout history of ethnic cleansings in the name of atheism (they're all in the name of a major religion, in fact). But I don't see how attempting to force a disbelief in god on someone is any different than one of the basic things I hate about religion--the self-proclaimed devout trying to convert me. While I agreed with essentially every point Hitchens made in God is Not Great, at times it got a little tedious like it was trying to convert me in the same way that band I mentioned came off in a couple interview clips I watched. With the Hitchens book, it was preaching to the choir, forcing me to think yes, I know, I agree, now get on with it! Rather than the creepy sense that wow, these Christian guys really want people to come to their shows and "get saved." The latter feels much more sinister to me because I disagree with it, but a convention celebrating atheism (as axver mentioned) is really just the same brainwashing lunacy as a festival like cornerstone.

The history of Ethnic cleansing has more to do with politics than religion

 

[LJT]

Peaceful? Surely you guys had a civil war? There were also a few shenanigans with the Mexicans as well.

I may be misunderstanding you, but I find it highly facetious to suggest the American Revolution went better than the French due to 'faith' and religion. There are a myriad of different reasons why they went differently, god isn't really one of them. Apologies if that isn't your point but at least to me it comes across that way.

When it comes down to it religion really isn't much of an animating influence on the world stage. It's all about regional interests, power, money and control. Religion and god are often just handy enough excuses to gain these things.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Prior to the Reformation at least, the one truly religious conflict of the European middle ages was on the frontier between Christendom and Islam. The Crusades. Unfortunately of course that did spin off a little sacking of Constantinople, so the mutual suspicion between Orthodox and Catholic might be considered a secondary fault line (leaving aside the crusaders were deep in debt to the Venetians for building them a fleet and needed booty fast). But the English and the French, who conducting at least one century long war, belonged to quite the same faith. Power, land and wealth.

 

[IWasBored]

There is nothing in atheism akin to brainwashing. If anything, it's brain unwashing. It promotes skepticism, free thinking, and logic. I would never attend one, but it certainly isn't lunacy

I'm just going to leave fym now, or at the very least stop trying to post here via phone, because I'm apparently starting arguments with the people I agree with. Lunacy, batshit crazy, ok I get it, I'm being way too hyperbolic and in the spectrum from harmless but nutty ranging to outright frightening, an atheism convention falls on the same end as a comic or video game convention (I went to one of those once). Free thinking and promoting skepticism I am all in favor of, when it crosses the line from being encouraged to make my own decisions, to being told what to think, that is where I have the issue.

I know that the entire point of the Hitchens book is to make an argument as to why religion...poisons everything...it says that on the cover. And I know that I could put the book down, I have that option just as I have the option not to swallow every word of it as truth. It's an awesome book, though, and I apparently sucked at conveying that point in my last post. I hit a few dull chapters and went from "haha! Yes! This is perfect," to "yeah, I know this already, get on with it..." Which I guess makes no sense. I'm done with this crap.

 

[IWasBored]

The history of Ethnic cleansing has more to do with politics than religion

Although, before I go, I just needed to laugh a that. Thanks Annie, that was hilarious.

 

[Jive Turkey]

I hate you IWB!!!


(but fo' real. Don't mistake matter of fact talkin' for crankiness )

 

[Jive Turkey]

I hit a few dull chapters and went from "haha! Yes! This is perfect," to "yeah, I know this already, get on with it..." Which I guess makes no sense. I'm done with this crap.

I hear ya. I'm at that point with the Sagan book I'm reading. Maybe I'm not the intended demographic, but I'm bored to tears.

Don't leave. The more opinions the better up in this bitch

 

[Jive Turkey]

for IWB

Blackstreet - Don't Leave Me - YouTube

 

[IWasBored]

I hear ya. I'm at that point with the Sagan book I'm reading. Maybe I'm not the intended demographic, but I'm bored to tears.

Don't leave. The more opinions the better up in this bitch

That's probably all that it really is, that I'm not exactly the target audience because I'm already in agreement with practically everything in it, and that there's very little new information or new opinions being presented. The part that started to lose me was the creationism vs evolution section, because it truly baffles me that this case even needs to be made anymore. When there is a wealth of scientific proof saying one thing, and a guy in a funny hat on the other end saying another, with "because I say so," as the only reasoning behind it, I absolutely can't understand why it's even up for debate.

I laughed quite heartily at your previous post when it came up in the current tab on the app. And then cringe in terror when i saw the thread below it from pleba titled the spank bank.

 

[IWasBored]

for IWB

Blackstreet - Don't Leave Me - YouTube

Dammit, I'm still on my phone and can't type that fast.

Annie needs to come back and tell me how politics, not religion, were responsible for various genocides throughout history. Stalin-era Russia is the only example of mass murder I can think of that was not entirely a result of introducing fear and/or hatred of another religion into politics.

 

[Kieran McConville]

You guys are missing a simple thing in your zest: prior to the modern era, and up to and including the various troubles of the Reformation in Europe... religion was politics.

I'd save the snark for when you really need it. Not to put words in 'Cactus Annie's' mouth or anything, maybe she's getting at something different.

 

[IWasBored]

I realize that, and understand that a) it still is in a good portion of the world and b) even in countries where there is a separation of church and state, every so often not entirely fringe groups keep trying to bring it into politics. Annie/maybe deathbear's statement seemed to imply that they were historically two different things, politics being responsible for genocides rather than religion. Maybe thats not what was intended, in addition to being notoriously bad at saying exactly what I mean, I may have also understood. Rest assured the snark supply is endless?

 

[Kieran McConville]

There's no way Cactus Annie is Deathbear.

But I take your point. In fact I chose to be in a glass-half-full mood, for no particular reason.

Still and all, politics is everywhere and everything. In a god-soaked culture, it's in religion. In a different kind of culture, it's in other things.

 

[LJT]

Prior to the Reformation at least, the one truly religious conflict of the European middle ages was on the frontier between Christendom and Islam. The Crusades. Unfortunately of course that did spin off a little sacking of Constantinople, so the mutual suspicion between Orthodox and Catholic might be considered a secondary fault line (leaving aside the crusaders were deep in debt to the Venetians for building them a fleet and needed booty fast). But the English and the French, who conducting at least one century long war, belonged to quite the same faith. Power, land and wealth.

I'd argue that religion wasn't even the main motivation of the crusades. At the time the lords of Europe had an over-abundance of landless sons and in the feudal era this wasn't the healthiest situation, they needed land and titles when there wasn't much more to give out in Europe. People also often forget that the Popes of the time were feudal lords themselves. Religion just served as an excuse for a land grab which I think is shown mainly by the attack on Constaninople. It was conquest and power. I'd argue the wars would have happened regardless of religion mainly due to the inroads the major Islamic factions of the time such as the Seljuq Turks had made into the territory of the Byzantine Empire, who were repeatedly asking for aid from the West. Later of course you had the advances of the Ottomans right into western lands which again was seen as a threat by the European lords.

The only crusade which I think which had a main goal of religious spread was probably the Children's Crusade. Not saying religion was not involved in the others but I don't believe without the benefits of land and trade route control the lords would have marched.

Look at it this way, think of the guys in the Republican party who espouse all this Christian rhetoric. How many of them do you believe are actually saying or doing the things they do out of religious conviction? They pander to a group who they helped whip up and create in order to get money and power.

Blaming religion for any conflict is too easy. Religion, race etc are all just secondary really.

 

[Kieran McConville]

Precisely. It's politics.

The Children's Crusade aside (a bizarre little detour) it was all about diverting the honour-and-blood-bound knightly classes of Europe off onto a nominally devout mission where they could do least harm at home. And it was all totally political. The Byzantines put out the first call for aid, and humiliating it must have been since they were the nominal lords of Christendom, the original Romans.

And of course the Franks and others got a few Levantine kingdoms out of it all. Hardly worth the sweat in the end, but it must have seemed otherwise at the time.

 

[Pearl]

There was a book out a few years ago that said even if Islam never came into existence, there still would've been tension between Eastern and Western Europe. I didn't read it, but here's the link:

A World Without Islam: Graham E. Fuller: Amazon.com: Books

I agree it is too easy to blame religion because some situations are too complex to point to one problem. Those who are adamantly against religion seem to think the world would be a utopia once all religions die off. But there are other factors that contribute to world and national conflicts.

 

[LJT]

Probably because they all shared the a common sea, the Mediterranean has long been a war zone between different controlling interests. Greece versus the Achaemenid Empire (Persia), Rome vs the Carthaginians of North Africa. Rome versus the Parthians, then the Sassanids. The Eastern Roman Empire or Byzantine against the Arab invasions, Seljuq Turks, Ottomans.

 

[IWasBored]

Only way the world becomes a utopia is if all the humans die off...I think, although then I won't be around to tell you whether I was right or not.

 

[Jive Turkey]

I'd argue that religion wasn't even the main motivation of the crusades. At the time the lords of Europe had an over-abundance of landless sons and in the feudal era this wasn't the healthiest situation, they needed land and titles when there wasn't much more to give out in Europe. People also often forget that the Popes of the time were feudal lords themselves. Religion just served as an excuse for a land grab which I think is shown mainly by the attack on Constaninople. It was conquest and power. I'd argue the wars would have happened regardless of religion mainly due to the inroads the major Islamic factions of the time such as the Seljuq Turks had made into the territory of the Byzantine Empire, who were repeatedly asking for aid from the West. Later of course you had the advances of the Ottomans right into western lands which again was seen as a threat by the European lords.

The only crusade which I think which had a main goal of religious spread was probably the Children's Crusade. Not saying religion was not involved in the others but I don't believe without the benefits of land and trade route control the lords would have marched.

Look at it this way, think of the guys in the Republican party who espouse all this Christian rhetoric. How many of them do you believe are actually saying or doing the things they do out of religious conviction? They pander to a group who they helped whip up and create in order to get money and power.

Blaming religion for any conflict is too easy. Religion, race etc are all just secondary really.

Religion may have not been the reason at the very top of the totem pole, but it rarely is. And that's sort of the point. It's the mechanism to control the masses who were certain the Crusades were about religion. Manipulation by the people in charge has always been one of the main criticisms of religion.

 

[LJT]

The people didn't need to be 'manipulated' by religion. The kings and dukes could rely on their complex feudal hierarchy to ensure vassals support. Your everyman in the field had little say in such matters. Religion may have given it an amount of popular support but it didn't factor much into what actually happened. A vassal had to support their liege with troops and the like no matter how fervently they believed in the faith or not.

Back then you didn't need popular support to go to war anymore than you actually need to these days considering Iraq and the like. All your really criticizing are the folk in power who will use any tool to remain in power and increase their control of whatever capital there is from religion to capitalism.

 

[Jive Turkey]

Having an army that believes they're acting in and for the name of god is a much more effective army than one who fights only because the King says they have to.

But are we really arguing whether the crusades were religious wars or not??

 

[Pearl]

The people didn't need to be 'manipulated' by religion. The kings and dukes could rely on their complex feudal hierarchy to ensure vassals support. Your everyman in the field had little say in such matters. Religion may have given it an amount of popular support but it didn't factor much into what actually happened. A vassal had to support their liege with troops and the like no matter how fervently they believed in the faith or not.

Back then you didn't need popular support to go to war anymore than you actually need to these days considering Iraq and the like. All your really criticizing are the folk in power who will use any tool to remain in power and increase their control of whatever capital there is from religion to capitalism.

I agree. The average person in the medieval period weren't exactly stupid or illogical; they simply didn't have much freedom to think for themselves and had to do what their lord or king told them to do.

There's a lot of ways to manipulate the masses, and you don't need religion to do it. You can use nationalism or political pride. Just get a charismatic orator who knows how to strike fear, pride or anything else into many people, and you got yourself a problem.

 

[Jive Turkey]

The average person in the medieval period weren't exactly stupid or illogical

I'd have to disagree with this

And yes, you can use other methods for manipulation, but none of them are as effective as appealing to basic human fears and promises of immortality. There are things people can be convinced to do for religion that they wouldn't do for any other reasons

 

[LJT]

Having an army that can be stripped of all their possessions and family arrested is or killed if they don't obey is probably more effective still. While most religions deserve criticism for much of what it promotes, I feel your ire would be better directed at the power structures that exist and have existed. Religious war and such is a concept only really invented since the turn of the first Millenium. Injustice and persecution have existed for much longer.

 

[Jive Turkey]

I'm sure we could make a compelling argument that jihad isn't religiously motivated too

 

[Pearl]

I'm not saying religion doesn't play into religious wars or terrorism, but I don't think it is the one and only reason.

 

[Jive Turkey]

I wouldn't disagree with that

 

[u2popmofo]

I'm sure we could make a compelling argument that jihad isn't religiously motivated too

Or that most every war in Asian history somehow wasn't "religiously motivated".

Saying the concept of religious war didn't exist until after the first millennium is like saying half of the world doesn't exist.

 

[LJT]

I'd make a similar argument that the Arab wars of conquest from the 7th to 10th centuries were more about an expansionist new nation, again control of land and trade routes. I will grant you it was likely Islam that fashioned this new sense of being a singular people, from desert tribes to burgeoning empire. Afterwards Jihad was a defence against incoming European powers. Modern jihad I see as more of a response to being politically sidelined and alienated in the world. With the British and then US governments propping up dictatorships that either were responsible for supporting islamic or propping up other governments that didn't treat the muslims well within their borders.

You push anyone to the side and they are likely to go to extremes. Alex Jones while clearly nuts is in my opinion an actual expression of deep unease many Americans have with Washington and the financial worlds sway, these irrational fears are a byproduct of a deeply injust system hence the religious rights paranoia. Religion doesn't cause that injustice such as the way capitalism works or why the healthcare system is the way it is, it's more an expression of that inequality that comes out in some rather unfortunate ways, but it would still come out even if religion didn't exist.