Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage th

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Religions are fairy tales for adults. Should we encourage them to grow up?

My mind set is close to Daniel Dennett as far as what religious people / theist should become after they grow up.

Personally, I like a lot of the social functions and appeasement of our need for fellowship, hivishness and tribalism offered by religious institutions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m5tGpMcFF7U

So I do not want to kill all religions but just encourage them to be more moral, tolerant and give equality to women and gays.

Having said the above, People and recent trends to read scriptures literally have cause many to forget that religions were invented as theatre and myth and were never meant to be read or taken literally. They were designed to seek God, not to find one.

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/03132009/watch.html

Rabbi Hillel, the older contemporary of Jesus, said that when asked to sum up the whole of Jewish teaching, while he stood on one leg, said, "The Golden Rule. That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. And everything else is only commentary. Now, go and study it."

Please listen as to what is said about literal reading.

"Origen, the great second or third century Greek commentator on the Bible said that it is absolutely impossible to take these texts literally. You simply cannot do so. And he said, "God has put these sort of conundrums and paradoxes in so that we are forced to seek a deeper meaning."

As you can see from the following, religions and temples have always been about entertainment and fellowship.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7BHvN6rZZA

If Christianity and Islam could return to the old way of seeking God instead of idol worshiping false Gods, perhaps jihadists and other fundamental believers might chill and get along the way they have at some points in our past history.

Religions are fairy tales for adults. If this is a truth, we should encourage Christianity and Islam as well as all other religions to grow up and return to their better past of seeking God instead of idol worshiping Yahweh and Allah. Both of them are mythical and manmade Gods.

To just leave Christians and Muslim idol worshipers to continue as is means that we may never rid ourselves of their institutionalized homophobia and misogyny. The kind and moral thing to do is to try to correct our immoral religious friends to recognize their myths as fairy tales for adults. Do you agree?

Regards
DL

You can encourage them but it most likely won't change their minds.

No. What if YOU, and people who believe as you do, are the ones who are immoral, need to be corrected, and taught to recognize the myths, in which you believe, as fairy tales for adults? There's no such thing, IMO, as an exact science, for instance, as I believe we have yet to even scratch the surface of many, MANY things. What if it's a combination, of BOTH, deity and science? I don't feel that's implausible. Why does it HAVE TO BE one, or the other?

How 'bout we just let people believe what they CHOOSE to believe, and guide them, IF they ASK? How 'bout if religious people stop being Bible-thumpers, if they are, and non-religious people stop being science-or-whatever-thumpers, if they are? How 'bout if we make our lot in life, to just be good to people, and NOT make it our lot to point-out what is our OPINION that someone else has erred?

If you're choosing what to believe, you're doing belief wrong.

How so?

You know, this is kind of hard. Grow up relative to what? The Secular world? The secular don't reproduce, are pacifist narcissists who would never die on behalf of anything other then their right to entitlements. They would sooner fly to Syria and become human shields to stop their nations planes from bombing people and allow their government to absorb an unlimited number of refugees, then vote for their nation to militarily intervene on behalf of anyone. They run ponzi-schemes where they build such great welfare societies with beautiful streets and fast trains, and then dont' reproduce, bringing in immigrants to breed the next generation of taxpayers.

When their system goes to crap, they become nazis or commies.

Maybe the secular need to grow up. You can't make heaven on earth, and the heaven you create is a generational heaven just for you, that you then ask the next generation of immigrants pay for.

Look, I wholly acknowledge the grand failings of religion. But most of those failings are nothing more then human failings, that don't go away even after you do way with God.

The answer to bad religion is not no religion. The answer to bad religion is good religion... and good religion isn't one that "grows up," by adopting secular standards. Equality between the sexes isn't something you need to look outside of religion to find, especially if you come from a Judeo background.

What you believe in is determined by what you find credible. In most cases, what you find credible is determined by your experiences along with a degree of inductive/deductive reason. You don't so much make a choice as come to a conclusion based on these and other factors.

What you answer here IS choosing. Living out one's faith is CHOOSING to put "belief" into practice. This is the same as what you just described.

If I *choose* to sit in a chair, it is because I *believe* it will hold my weight. I wouldn't likely sit in a child-size wooden chair because I am too big. I *don't believe* it will hold my weight. Yes, that is based on reason, but I still make choices.

If I *choose* to confide something very personal to a friend, it is because I *believe* that friend is trustworthy. Yes, it is still based on experiences and reason, but it is belief.

Everyone puts faith in *something.* If you believe a scientific study to be correct, you are choosing to trust that the scientists are honest and did all the experiments correctly and got accurate results. Then you make choices based on that belief. If you believe the weather forecasters to be correct, you make choices about what outdoor activities you might do on a certain day.

Choices = belief in practice. They go hand-in-hand. When someone says I "choose" to believe such-and-such, they are saying that principle/religion/etc GUIDES their life.

So you agree that your choices are illusory and that your beliefs are entirely the product of your environment. Thanks for the clarification.

No, not at all. Unless you think that the physical world is not real and our experiences are all in our own heads, if we even have heads.

I am saying that beliefs are often based on experiences and rational thought, and that belief and choices are two sides of the same coin.

I do not understand at all where your comment is being based on what I said above, and I do not appreciate having words "put in my mouth."

No, not at all. Unless you think that the physical world is not real and our experiences are all in our own heads, if we even have heads.[/quote]

What a bizarre non sequitur. Why would solipsism be a necessary requirement for beliefs to stem from learned behaviours and experiences?



And I'm saying that's completely wrong. Your conclusions are inevitable products of your past experiences and environment, and subject to change only through the introduction of new information from within or without. It doesn't matter how you define the process, you cannot force yourself to believe something that you are convinced is not true.



Because you're putting the cart before the horse. I don't appreciate holier-than-thou preaching from people who have clearly missed the point of my posts, but you can't always get what you want.

Do you think the indoctrination is too entrenched or do people just not care about their morals?

Regards
DL

You have seen the evil that letting religions believe whatever they like has produced. Or were you sleeping through that class.

I promote seeking God as you do but to ignore religious evil is not the way to go.

For the evils of religion to grow, read any scripture literally.

Any and all harmless beliefs are allowed by Gnostic Christians. We know that any myth can be internalized for good results and as esoteric ecumenists, we enjoy knowledge of all the myths that man has created about Gods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oR02cia ... =PLCBF574D

When there is a victim is when that view changes. Then you see why Christianity annihilated Gnostic Christianity. We do not let the evils of forced literalism go unopposed. To a tyrant like Constantine, we were poison. One of his first commands to his new Church was to kill off the free thinkers and of course, his new tool, his Church, did as bid. It was quite a ride for free thought for the next 1,000 years.

How can a Gnostic Christian, --- and any other free thinking moral person, --- not judge other's morals when seeing someone hurt other because of the same Church's teachings today?

Can you ignore such things if you have decent morals? Impossible. Especially with Islam pulling the same murderous, freedom stifling ****.

We must discriminate and judge constantly. Every law is a compulsion on all of us to judge.

It is my view that all right wing literalists and fundamentals hurt all of us who are moral religionists, --- as well as those who do not believe. Literalists hurt their parent religions --- and everyone else, be he a believer or not. Literalists and the right wing of religions make us all into laughing stocks. Their God of talking animals, genocidal floods and retribution has got to go. So must beliefs in fantasy, miracles and magic. These are all evil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2zhlDbMfDg

They also do much harm to their own fellow adherents.

African witches and Jesus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MlRG9gXriVI

Jesus Camp 1of 3
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LACyLTsH4ac

Death to Gays.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TyuKLyGUHNE

For evil to grow my friend, all good people need do is nothing. Fight literalism when you can. It is your duty to our fellow man.

Regards
DL

But they have much better laws than religious laws.

You do not see Christians asking the secular to install biblical laws anywhere. Right?

The religious are quite happy to keep their God as long as they do not have to live by biblical law

That is pure Christian hypocrisy IMO.

Regards
DL

Equality is not what the mainstream religions are selling. The are selling homophobia, misogyny and division instead of rapprochement.

I agree that the answer to bad religion is not no religion. I am a Gnostic Christian and do not want see my religion die but if we cannot do better than the mainstream then we should die along with them.

Gnostic Christian morals are quite better and I hope people recognize that demonstrable fact and just move into it.

Regards
DL