What is the purpose of religion?

[BORTZ]

What is the purpose of religion?

MY MOM!!!

Quoting for truth.
Anyways i have my beliefs, but it will be a dogs cold breakfast before i get into a fight on the internet about religion.

 

[Hadrian]

Anyways i have my beliefs, but it will be a dogs cold breakfast before i get into a fight on the internet about religion.

What is the point of having the internet if you're not going to force your opinions on people?

 

[BORTZ]

Ill open a new thread for that one.

 

[Gahars]

I don't see an answer here Gahars. All i see is you dissecting my post because you disagree with me and you kind of lost track of the point.
Let me simplify it even further.
Do you think it's right for a belief which has no facts to take the lives of other people?
Let’s start from here and than we’ll branch off. Ok? How does that sound?

Either you're just not reading, or are you refusing to think on what you are reading... unless pointing out that the situation was far more complex than "Religion kills because they think science bad!" is somehow dodging the issue.

TL;DR (Because I suppose anything more than a "Yes, Engert, your blatant oversimplifications with no basis in reality are totally correct," won't sustain your interest...):

Spoiler

It's good. Seriously.

Ps: i did read the whole thread but you come across as a fundamentalist.

Because saying that religion can help people find comfort, asserting that Christianity is a religion and not a philosophy, and disagreeing with the notion that God had to exist in order to create the universe (and supplying a video where Stephen Hawking uses science to argue that there is, in fact, no God) sounds like a real fundamentalist, right?

Either you're desperately lying here to save face (hint: it isn't working), or you honestly believe that having to gall to show respect towards religion (and note its positive contributions to society, rather than mindlessly bash it) is akin to being a fundamentalist.

That's a pretty warped and twisted worldview... but, Engert, at this point, I can hardly say I'd be surprised.

 

[Engert]

So you still didn't answer my question.
This (our conversation) is a perfect example of people not finding middle ground. If we who speak the same language can't find middle ground how do you expect Israel and Palestine to find middle ground?
I guess it's all cool even if it ends like this, as long as we don't wage holy wars that is.

 

[Castiel]

So you still didn't answer my question.

Just to make you happy Engert, I shall try to explain.

Now here is a simple question: Why burn someone for believing in facts? Because some people don't think before acting.
Do you see science burning people for believing? No.
This is the base of the argument. Not details. So don't dance around and jump all over. Just focus on the fundamentals. This is where everything boils down. At death.
When you take someone’s life that’s where things get really serious.
And that's why religion has been impeding human progress.
This quote taken from Foxi4 in an earlier thread.

BINARY MATHEMATICS - Binary arithmetic, so important to modern computer science, was the brainchild of *Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz.* Leibniz, also invented a binary calculator which was a forerunner of modern computational machines. He was a devout Lutheran.

CHEMISTRY - *Robert Boyle* is called by some the Father of Chemistry. His science sprang directly from his faith. All of his writings show the imprint of Christianity. As a young man, newly converted to Christ, he struggled with faith because the science of the day contained so much which was contrary to his belief. He therefore determined that every fact must be clearly established and tested, in which case he felt certain that it would prove compatible with scripture since both had the same author. *John Dalton,* a Quaker, gave us the atomic theory behind chemistry. *Josiah Willard Gibbs* was a creator of statistical mechanics (a specialized branch of chemistry) and in France, the ardent Roman Catholic *Pierre Duhem* also constributed to the emerging science of statistical mechanics. *Sir Humphrey Davy* claimed faith and is noted for his chemical researches as was his protege *Michael Faraday* who first liquified chlorine. The isolater of inert gases, *Sir William Ramsay,* also was a man of Christian faith.

CURVATURE OF SPACE - *Nicholas Cusa,* Catholic cardinal, PREDICTED that space must be curved if God were to be equally present at every point. Twentieth Century findings confirmed his fifteenth century prediction. One of the mathematicians who "invented" curved space was *Bernhard Riemann* a devout Christian. He died young of tuberculosis, having his wife read his favorite psalms to him.

EXPANDING UNIVERSE - The Belgian priest *Georges Lemaitre* first gave us a viable mathematics for an expanding universe. His PREDICTION that the universe could not be stable was soon proven by Hubble and others. *Sir Arthur Eddington* championed Lemaitre's theories in a book called The Expanding Universe. Eddington was a Quaker who said that the believer found arguments for the non-existence of God to be quaint.

GENETICS - *Gregor Mendel,* a Roman Catholic priest and abbott, first discovered the laws of genetics with his now famous studies of the garden pea. His work lay in obscurity for many years before being rediscovered. Mendel did not accept Darwin's theory, because his own discoveries in genetics showed that creatures tend to revert to kind.

Because they took the lives of people who were observing and noticing that things were different and not what the church said.
Out of all of the people in this world, and all of the people still yet to come, do you believe only those certain people that got killed by radicals will be the only ones to find these discoveries?
You are able to argue that they were finding things out. This alone is proof enough that the work that they were making got passed on, and can continue to be worked with.

 

[Foxi4]

I'm being used as a Source (or perhaps I should say sources that I dug up) - I should probably feel humbled now...

 

[Castiel]

I'm being used as a Source (or perhaps I should say sources that I dug up) - I should probably feel humbled now...

You tend to get around in these topics

 

[Foxi4]

You tend to get around in these topics

I usually can't help myself but waltz into them, especially when I hear the "Rarara, Religion stalls science!" when in many cases, religion just happens to be the very inspiration behind it. Sure, there was a period of book burning and other nonsense, but Christianity grew out of it - it's a dark chapter in its history, but most, if not all movements have such chapters.

Condemning Christianity as a whole is like condemning the U.S because at one point a good portion of it strongly supported slavery and racial segregation.

 

[retKHAAAN]

So you still didn't answer my question.
This (our conversation) is a perfect example of people not finding middle ground. If we who speak the same language can't find middle ground how do you expect Israel and Palestine to find middle ground?
I guess it's all cool even if it ends like this, as long as we don't wage holy wars that is.

Sorry dude, but the only one failing to see a middle ground in that convo is you. Gahars is pretty far from a fundamentalist, but he's also not someone to bash other people's religious beliefs merely because he disagrees with them. Christians, Muslims, Buddists, Jews, Atheists, Agnostics...are all great, so long as they don't infringe upon one another claiming righteousness or scientific deduction. Sadly, the bigger men are too few.

 

[air2004]

I love twisted logic when it comes to religion , and how it often plays on peoples emotions in order to justify its self. God is real or something bigger than ourselves anyway. Seriously the big bang ? ok I will let you have that , but what caused the big bang ? what was before the big bang ? and yes I know these questions could be asked about god ....like before god was god where did god come from ? and if god always was , what was prior to the big bang was ......who or what created god ? who or what created the big bang ? its a hard thing to wrap our heads around.

 

[Psionic Roshambo]

This movie explains going door to door pushing religion perfectly.... lol

 

[Sanoblue]

the great thing about science is you don't have to believe it.... its still true

>.> cant say that about the bearded man in the sky.... or whom ever (other religions)

 

[Vulpes Abnocto]

This thread went far better than any of us expected it to.
I was very pleased to see some very thoughtful contributions.
Thank you to everyone who did more than post slogans, rhetoric, and comedy to support your views.

It seems that we actually can still have civilized discussions here.