Alternatives to religion

JCMac · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 4:10 pm Post subject:

Alternatives to religion.
Religion is like quack medicine. It's also like a placebo, to cure symptoms instead of tackling the roots of our problems.
Come to think of it, the majority of humanity would rather be high or drunk all the time.
Only a few of us are strong enough to be able to take life as it is, without the aid of supernatural fancies.

There seems to be a dualism here, but I think it's much more complicated than that. For much of the world's population, religion works for them, as they see it. As an outside observer, I would say that it only works so much as they allow their humanistic side to get involved. Christians like to insist that they don't take the Bible literally - by this they are in fact conceding that they put more trust on their natural capacity for morality - or humanism, than to take every word in their book as literal as a doctor's prescription.

Most people continue to cling religion because they insist that it's true and it works. They don't realize that it works only because they see it that way, they insist and convince themselves that it does indeed work, that it is true. That's how alternative medicine works. It's unlike the study of electronics - our knowledge of electrons obviously works because we are able to actually apply them and build machines from the principles. With religion, and alternative medicine, it is dubious.

Let's show why the alternatives to religion really work and prove that religion only apparently works, when it really does not. Let's not just show that religion is a gigantic kool-aid of human history, let's also show the benefits of not adhering to religion.
_________________
"The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

"Intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith; tolerance grows only when faith loses certainty; certainty is murderous."
-Will Durant

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. But I'm not sure about the universe."

Paranoia21 · Posted: Tue Jul 17, 2007 5:35 pm Post subject:

I like to go with the idea that if it works for them, let 'em have it. Unfourtunately, the only problem I have with that is when it affects anyone else's life besides the person who has the false belief. I want people to choose what they belief: it's their life. For me, my life was harder after I became an atheist, because I had nothing to lean on. But I eventually got past that, and now my mind is free of falsities: and that is what makes me feel great.
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VERITAS OMNIA VINCIT
Keep YOUR religion in YOUR churches and YOUR homes and out of OUR government.

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