Age- 15

Region- Colorado, USA

Philosophical/Religious Beliefs- None

Explanation- To be honest, I try to stay away from things like this. I dont care about religion. I dont care what your religion is. And I sure as hell will punch you in the face if you talking to me about it. However, if you force me to "decide" a religion to believe, I'd say Hinduism because its a neat idea, or Atheist because it's probably right.

Favorite Philosophers - Plato because of his idea of "philosopher king" which states only philosophers are fit to make logical decisions therefore they should rule. And Aristotle for creating the concept of Logic and Reason.

Age- 13

Region- No particular affiliation

Beliefs- I guess I would describe myself as almost being Agnostic, but at the same time, I don't have a closed mind against the concept of a higher being. I would freely accept the idea of some higher power, maybe not a 'God' as some people would think of it/Him, if I had decent reason to do so. I accept the universe's formation as natural, but I really can't swallow this (IMO) retarded concept that everything that has happened so far in time has happened of its own accord with absolutely no influence or guidance of some sort. Is this supposed influence I'm thinking of from a higher being? Is the universe itself some kind of giant sentient organism, and we as humans just small parts of it accepting its direction because we don't have a choice otherwise? Don't know. And frankly at the moment, don't care, because metaphysical speculation about WHY or HOW the universe exactly formed is just moot and no singular theory can be proved in even the slightest. If you think about the formation of the universe as an experiment, we as human beings have the results of this experiment and those results can be studied and observed, but these observations don't really tell us jackshit about the experiment, save for the fact that it simply happened.

tl;dr - Believe in a God of sorts, but not necessarily the big shiny man with infinite wisdom who judges everyone's souls.

Why/Explanation of Beliefs- Lampposts on Hikari 64 informed me of these truths when they were holding a watermelon rodeo in the belly of a green.

Ok, now I'm going to narrow the topic for a little bit here to make things interesting- what do you think the purpose of religion is? For me, it is the wish of an early people to describe their creation, a natural human desire, and it evolved into a tool of dominance and impression of morality. While I absolutely despise the concept of most modern religion, especially Christianity, due to the schisms between various sects (there are over 30,000 subcategories under the flag of Christianity/Roman Catholicism alone, including the Greek Orthodox and other Judeo-Christian religions- unbelievable), I believe that religion has impressed morals that allow society to function properly (i.e, no murder/theft). However, the only constancy in human history has been that no matter what sort of mores a society/era has, they will attempt to justify it one way or another, and more often than not, it is justified by religion. However, the modern collapse of traditionalism and morals, as much as I hate to admit, probably has a large part to do with growing secularism. What do you think?

I don't think believing in a God that absolves you of sin is better than not believing in sin. I also don't think avoiding sin because God wishes it is better than avoiding it because you care about your fellow man. I don't think how you treat people should really should have anything to do with religion. But, that's just my idea.

hydrotoxin: Morality is a positive effect of religion, but you don't really need to be religious to be moral. How many atheists do you know that run around stabbing people and stealing from charities while cheating on four girlfriends? Morality is something that was instilled in society because people realized that being good to each other is a whole lot more useful than pissing in each others' faces. And admittedly, religion instilled that fact.

However, I think much of religion is utterly corrupt. Take the Catholic faith. I've thoroughly read the Bible (quite an interesting book, IMO) and many of their so-called 'doctrines' aren't based upon what's written in the Bible, which is what they claim them to be based off. Rather, when these 'additional' beliefs were indoctrinated, they simply extended the Catholic church's power and influence, and of course, brought in money. Similarly, their Holidays (Holidays literally meaning Holy Days) are in no way based off scripture save a few obscure references they use to justify it. Easter, for example, is really a giant cockfest (Pagan fertility worship) Christmas is both an adaptation of the Romans' festival to the God of Sun, Sol, and of the Pagan holiday Yule. The main feast which celebrated the 'existence' of Sol, the Roman god, occurred on December 25th (hinthint; it's not a coincidence. Based on Biblical text, the man called Jesus probably wasn't even born in Winter, let alone a specified date like December 25th). Yule is very similar to Christmas and was celebrated by many Northern Pagans. Halloween is probably the least disguised of all the holidays, ripped straight from the Pagan belief that on October 31st the veil between the spirit and material realm thinned and dead spirits roamed the Earth, looking for offerings from family members. (Dead Spirits -> Kids in costumes, Offerings -> Candy, Family Members -> Random strangers) The reason for all these Pagan adaptions? So they could draw more people into the Catholic faith, particularly Pagans, and again extend their power and influence. "BUT WHY THIS BAD THEY SAVE ALL THOSE PAGANS SOULS"- no. They gain money and bury their core teachings under a huge pile of mirrors and smoke while becoming a powerful organization whose members don't really care all that much about 'souls' of others, save for the deluded dogmatic diehards (!!! triple alliteration !!!).

And I know I may have seemed to be raking solely on Catholicism, but it was just an example. Plenty of religions have done things similar to Catholicism out of selfish, corrupt purposes.



tl;dr: Religious morality, good. Religious corruption and bullshit, bad.

Of course, you don't need religion to be moral, because we get morality from society. However, I am saying that morality originated from religion, which is what ragdollmaster just conveniently stated Also, Halloween is not a religious holiday by any means. Personally, I believe that because morality is a societal ideal, it really does not exist. There are no moral absolutes, no good or evil, etc. And Ragdollmaster, I'm glad you have read the Bible (as have I). I see too many ignorant atheists nowadays whose only reference for the illogic of the Christian church are quotes from the internet. For one to understand religion, one must educate the self. I have read many metaphysical and scientific texts, and have found that all religions are fundamentally the same, and exist for the same reason. Personally, my area of expertise is physics, which I find absolutely fascinating, and weapons technology, which probably doesn't really apply here. Anyone, everyone is making some good points- please continue.

I think religion was created in the first place oh so long ago to explain things in the world like gravity. Now I think the only purpose it serves is to give people comfort and hope. If thats what you need to do to get through your day, thats fine with me, just dont start talking to me with some bullshit that I'm gonna go to hell, or start blabbing on about how Jeesus is our savior. Just keep that stuff to yourself, and I'm fine with it.

[somewhat off-topic post but not completely off-topic]


Heh...You never did reply to me regarding that in the "society vs intelligent people" thread :P

I'd like to hear why you attribute origin of morals specifically to religion, and not to early humans trying not to die. It's curious considering you don't believe the whole garden of eden thing.

It seems to me that basic pillars of 'morality' formed long before people even began to concern themselves with anything other than food and shelter, much less religion. By 'pillars' i mean things like not to murder your own, be productive, and so on and so forth. It all stems from instinctual will to survive. Of course the list became more complex over the centuries, as the size and structure of society changed, but it all revolved around preservation of society (which is directly connected to survival of individual humans). Society in itself is like a living evolving organism, made up of people who serve as cells.

As religions started to emerge to explain natural phenomena and origin of humans, some of them reinforced already known important mores by attributing them to will of deities or spirits. Then came the laws which did exactly the same, except without reference to divinity (code of hammurabi, and so on and so forth).

[/somewhat off-topic post but not completely off-topic]

[just-woke-up-super-tired-bleh view]
Im not too sure about the idea of people having morals due to religeon, I think that people are perfectly capable of treating their fellow man in a way that would appear indifferent to the way a moralistic religeous person would, even if they had never heard of religeon at all.

religeous morals these days use alot of scare tactics, mainly (as I think some people may have already pointed out a billion or so times in these religeous threads) for the corrupt purpose of having them commit to a church (*cough* benny hinn *cough*).

I dont really have a problem with people having morals for different reasons though (religeon/goodwill) as long as they commit to them and take satisfaction as opposed to relief from fulfilling them.
[/just-woke-up-super-tired-bleh view]

One must keep in mind that early peoples were scavengers and hunters, and did not have time to formulate religions because they were too busy trying to survive. Early evidence suggests that these early people killed each other for dominance of the group- obviously goes against what you're saying about "killing your own" laws. However, with the rise of agrarianism and early river valley civilizations during the Neolithic era, people began to settle down in early cities and villages semi-permanently, thus creating religion, and as an extension of religion, a moral code, although obviously the intention was to try and get indigenous peoples to STOP killing each other. You must remember that early kings were warrior-folk, not scholars, until this period. To change that, the intellectuals of that era couldn't have just said "Oh, ok guys, this is wrong, lets stop and think". So they invented deities to control the people of these early cities (evidence strongly suggests that priests were nearly equal in power to kings), and from these deities comes modern religion. I should have elaborated in the first place.