Sexual morality and Organized Religion

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WHAT ARTICLE?

You all seem to know what you're talking about and referring back to, but I haven't seen a URL or magazine or book reference anywhere.

Yeah, that's what I'm trying to figure out too... What f*****g article?

As for this whole religion thing, I have this to say: f**k religion. Religion is nothing but control. The powers that be realized a long time ago that they can't make us do exactly what they want due to things beyond their control, but they can have more control over us if they get us to believe in some bearded man in the clouds that watches each and every one of us at ALL TIMES(God is santa claus for adults, lol) and keeps track of EVERYTHING WE DO, and he WILL PUNISH US FOR EACH AND EVERY SIN we commit. For example... Think about this. Think about where and when catholicism came from/became popular. Think about when the worst corruption we know of occurred... The ancient world, the middle ages, also known as the dark ages. Imagine you're a serf or a peasant. You work work work all day, and that's all you ever do. You get paid nothing. Your only reward is (hopefully)protection from the enemies of your lord(chances are the protectors will be much quicker to protect the lord). You can't really escape, and if you could, where the hell would you go? What would you do? You get outside the lord's walled in castle/town/whatever, then what? You're on your own, good luck. So what can you do to escape this hell you live in? You could take your own life, but wait! "god" says that's a sin, and you'll just suffer even more. The ancient rulers knew this. That is why suicide is a sin. I'm not trying to condone suicide here or suggest that anybody do it, but I could understand in some extreme circumstances, how that would be the only option for an end to misery.

Religion is useless. It gives us something else to divide ourselves about, like we don't have enough of that. It preaches intolerance and ignorance. It tells you you are a bad person for being unable to follow an IMPOSSIBLE code of conduct(yes, it's impossible to follow it exactly as its written. Good luck trying).

Religion is full of holes and contradictions. It tells you who you are is decided by god as god created us all and made us the way we all are. Then it tells you you're bad if you're homosexual(which is part of who you are, the way you were born). God made homosexuals and then condemns them to hell for being homosexual? What the hell is that? I can see how society might decide that homosexuality is bad in terms of survival of the whole species. Obviously if you're gay you probably won't be reproducing unless it's forced. But that's all irrelevant, because remember, god created you the way you are, so god decided that you will be gay. God lacks logic. I'm gonna go make a robot. I will program this robot to sodomize children. When the robot proceeds to sodomize children, as it has been programmed(by me) to do, I will then become furious and blow the robot up with an RPG. Yay, now I make about as much sense as god. Go me...

I don't need religion. Nobody needs religion. It's a crutch for some people. Some people feel that life should have meaning. The fact of the matter is, life has no meaning. Thanks to the fairy tale of god, now people's lives have meaning(at least to them) because they're living "for god" and spreading "his word." Whatever. It would be nice if life had a meaning or purpose, but it really doesn't, and I'm fine with that. I'm not immoral. I have morals, for sure, moreso than most so-called christians. I don't need some stupid old book telling me what to do. God didn't create man in his image, man created god in his image. Man wrote the bible.

Think about this too. God has the ability to just create planets, universes, people, trees, etc. He has the ability to talk to people too, which he uses sometimes. Well, if he has the ability to talk to people, and he knows that people(who he created, by the way) are imperfect, sinful beings, why then, would he talk to ONE person and trust that ONE(imperfect, sinful) person to spread his word via a book without f*****g it up? Why wouldn't god just talk to each and every one of us individually? Because he doesn't exist, he doesn't care, or he's not anything close to what organized religion tells us.

I hate religious nuts and bible thumpers. They have nothing better to do than tell you how f****d up your life is and how you need to be saved. They also just LOVE quoting bible verses all the damn time. They're so familiar with the bible but they can't answer simple questions about it, and they get super easily frustrated when you ask. They ALWAYS end up saying "god works in mysterious ways," or they get pissed and tell you to go away.

And that's another thing... "god works in mysterious ways." I don't buy that. That's just a cop-out. God can't work in mysterious ways if he expects a skeptical person to do what he says. When you're skeptical/cynical, you don't just believe whatever you hear. You need validation, confirmation of some sort. Without that confirmation, it's very hard to just follow whatever you're told. God must know this, for he created us. He should also be smart enough to realize that if he doesn't satisfy our need for confirmation/validation, that we will not follow it, and it's not our fault for being skeptical(as he made us that way), but rather his fault for making us that way and not giving the confirmation we need in the first place.

If you need religion to get you thru your daily life, fine... Do what you gotta do. Just keep that s**t to yourself. And before you feel the need to start preaching your BS to me, just remember this one thing:

God made me an atheist. Who are you to question His wisdom?

Religion has always been and still is the greatest source of evil in the world. Terrible atrocities happen in the name of religion. Claiming that one needs religion to have morals is just plain absurd. I've been an atheist since I was a little kid and in many ways I am far better human being than many religious people around me.

I just don't do wrong because I know it's wrong. Religious people do wrong and then ask their gods for forgiveness because they fear punishment.

Well, I have pretty strong morals yet I'm not part of any organized religion.

If you join our gang and give us protection money, we will kill your enemies (or ours as the case may be )

We will give you moral guidance, including which animals are ok to eat, on which days, and you will feel the security of our clan breathing down your neck, or suffer in hell for not joining our gang

I can't find the quote online to get it exactly word for word but there was a thing like this on Oz. They said how being in a gang is like being in a religion. Love thy fellow man becomes love thy brother gangster. There was something about how what if you don't believe in it any more and discover that emptiness is still inside you.

I'm going to check the dvd for the exact quotes.

"Being in a gang is a lot like being in a religion. You've got rules to follow, a leader to obey and at the heart it's about love. Love thy fellow man becomes love thy brother gangster. But what if you stop believing the religion you've been preaching? You come to see that the hole is still in your soul, that the god you thought you had is nothing but a hologram."

Last edited by hanyo on 01 Nov 2011, 4:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I'm a Christian--so, that means I think that our purpose in life is to know God. In other words--it's like asking why my coffee maker makes coffee. It was made for that purpose in the first place.

Beyond that, religion and philosophy allow us to think about the world beyond ourselves; to think about more than whether we're earning enough money or making enough friends. It's how we think about questions of ethics, the structure of society, the idea of identity.

Hard science, however beautiful it is and however much I love it, is limited. It can only ask questions about testable things--things you can observe; things made of matter or energy. It can't answer questions like, "Is this painting beautiful," or, "Is it right to hurt a child," or, "Is it more important to do what you love or to make your loved ones happy?" All of that is a matter of philosophy, religion, and related fields. They depend on logic, theory, and partly or totally untestable ideas.

If life were nothing but matter and energy, then depending only on hard science would make sense. But life is more than that: Life is also made of information. You, at your most essential, are the information stored in your brain--the raw data that defines your identity and your memories and the way you process information. Information is non-material, and you can't put it in a test tube. When you deal with pure information, you have to use reasoning designed to deal with pure information--religion, philosophy, and oddly enough the hardest science of all, mathematics. Philosophy is necessary to think about information--but, remember, you can't truly prove that anything but your own mind exists. That's where you have to make a leap of faith; you have to believe that other people exist, too, that the world outside you exists. And that's where religion begins.

Hard science deals with the world of matter and energy; philosophy deals with the world of information; and religion connects the information in your head with the information in the world around you. Without all three, you really can't have the full picture.

You've confused "religion" with "reason". I adequately connect internal and external information without religion, by using reason. It's not a flawless process, but no human process is.

Religion takes a persons innate drive for spirituality and loving kindness amongst once clan, and co opts it for the benefit of the state

The only benefit I can see is companionship and getting out of the house.

Loving kindness should extend to animals and nature, but I bet most church and mosque goers dont give a hoot about suffering factory farmed animals

They have had their spirit of loving kindness corrupted by state agencies and conditioning vehicles of propaganda

Many christians wanted the army to bomb Iraq and kill women and children.

They believe lying leaders who stand next a picture of christ pointing fingers at non gang members....

Benefit of the state, huh? Look at history... the church and the state have been at odds just as much as they've backed each other up. And just as there are Christians supporting bombings, there are Christians risking their lives to help people in danger of being bombed... You could talk all day about the bad things religious people have done; and I could spend all day talking about the good things religious people have done, and the bad things non-religious people have done; and we'd still come to no conclusion other than that people are human and fallible and they do bad things and good things. At the bottom of it is the idea of bad and good to begin with, though--something that's built in. I note you didn't say a thing about how you knew that killing innocent people with bombs was bad. You didn't have to; it was obvious to you. That's part of why I think we are built to connect with God--the idea that we have in our heads of "good" and "bad", rather than just "beneficial" and "detrimental". However screwed up that idea gets, however much it can be twisted, it still exists, and that says a lot to me about human nature.

What you're saying about "reason" is the same thing I'm saying about philosophy (which, obviously, runs on reason). I'm also saying, though, that there's a large chunk of truth which exists, but fundamentally unprovable; and to make any use of that, we need faith. Even philosophy--reason--breaks down unless you take as axiomatic that other people and things exist--and that means taking it on faith. It's still a good step from faith to religion; but that's the beginning of it.

That apparent divide is only to appease intellectuals who would riot if the truth of the relationship was made more evident or publicized:arrow:

Ideologically fundamental socialism ( communism ) is there to replace religion in some countries

In NZ the closed brethren spent up large and got rid of the women and gay friendly socialists we had for the last decade, all because they were too heathean for them. It was like a crusade..

Lobbyist in Washington get a ton of cash from Christian and Muslim interests

If one can learn moral without religion then there's no need for the extra bunk. I make it a personal choice though and respect it whatever it would be. Religion is part of the human culture and as one it's respectable. Still, reading my signature tells me there may be reasons to move on.

Go to the first post and click on the line that says

It's a hotlink, though it doesn't look like one.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/aspergirls/201010/sex-what-do-people-aspergers-need-know

That's the article. Click on it. It was in my first post.

I don't "use" science to determine whether it's right or wrong to hurt a child (we're talking morality here ), I don't use religion either, since i am an atheist. In fact I don't need to "use" anything because there is a human drive to protect and nurture the young, which can be EXPLAINED scientifically, in terms of survival of the species. You don't kill children, you don't rape women (it hinders their ability to reproduce later and have more children, out of trauma) you don't try to alienate your neighbours on purpose (being a social animal means you need the community to be on your side), etc. It's not something I need religion for, or science, it's biologically impinted in me. The only people who would need religion would be sociopaths, and I highly doubt they would go into it willingly....

I'm afraid reality doesn't change based on a person's belief system.