Is this another good reason why religion is bad for progress?

Question

Is this another good reason why religion is bad for progress?

Answer 1

But there were religions in the Eurasia super continent.

Answer 2

Many things cause divisiveness (philosophy, race, nationality, etc.) - not just religion.



Also, the 'flow of concepts' is meaningless if there is no ready path (for example you could be an atheistic society on a faraway island, so your isolation and subsequent 'primitive' culture would be the result of geographical factors, not societal/religious ones).



"Eurasia" contained some of the most fanatical religious people ever known, so obviously their technological advances weren't due to "enlightenment" (it was more due to the arms race, and trying to develop better weapons to defeat their enemies, religious or otherwise).



Your heart's in the right place, but your argument doesn't necessarily hold - sorry.

Answer 3

your question is based on a fallacious assumption that you make no attempt to prove.,so any answer to this question is flawed.

if religion is an impediment to progress than prove it than go from there. as for everyone getting along that would require the extinction of mankind ,most animals ,fish, most birds ,almost all insects,and certain plants .peace on earth would be like life on mars is today,i suspect that the martians discovered the secret to peaceful co-existence,annihilation.

Answer 4

Your basic assumptions are incorrrect.

1) Religions do not cause divisiveness. Intolerance does.

2) Offensiveness in this case would be an irrational response based in intolerance.

3) Religion does not inhibit the flow of information. Where is your logic to support this statement?

4) Religion does not cause wars. Intolerance, fear, or political aggression does.

5) Religions that I know of all teach cooperation.



You are so far off-base at the root of your arguments, that I am at a loss to see any real reasoning here.

Answer 5

people will always find something to fight about and not share either they will think that this group is not good enough to share with or they just don't trust them not to use it against them I dunno but religion is not the cause of our problems as humans we've gone and made problems for ourselves

Answer 6

There is plenty of divisiveness and war without religion. It doesn't cause this, but it's often used as and excuse or a support for it.

Answer 7

do you miss the sixties? are you a lost hippie? thats not a good reason for hating religion. and judging it as so only shows atheists can be just as judgemental.

Answer 8

Hey!



Ever read the book 'The Giver'? They all cooperated and ran like clockwork. They also never saw color, never felt pleasure, and never got to choose anything for themselves. But they got along perfect.



That's basically what you're talking about. Because, no offense, but honey, people get offended over EVERYTHING that makes another person 'different'. You want to make everyone exactly alike? Cookie cutter people?



That means, no color, no race, no religion, no different styles, no choices. Everyone is the same, and no one is unique. Do you really want that?



What you are talking about is just one step. You have to make everyone EXACTLY ALIKE to make them truly cooperate together. Otherwise, you're going to have people that will not work together because they are DIFFERENT. Doesn't matter where they are different, it can be race, religion, personality, clothing, and a million other things.



I don't want to live in a cookie cutter world for the sake of 'cooperation'. Removing choice is an awful idea.



That's my opinion on the subject. Hope it helps!



Luv ya,

Tashi :)

Answer 9

Religions have done you & I (us, personally) a great service...so very many people have died because of religion that the world you and I currently share would be unbearably over-populated & terminally polluted by now had all those unfortunate folks lived & continued breeding.

Answer 10

Well, religion had western civilization on lockdown for a thousand years or so. They called it the dark ages. Still goes on, even here, where they'd like to throw science teachers into the dungeons, like some ignorant pope, for having the audacity to keep Jeebus out of their classrooms. Fundamentalist christians ARE the barbarians at this empire's gates.

Answer 11

Yes

Answer 12

That would not just be another good reason, that is THE reason.



Hey slow guy, she never said she was an atheist. That is the second post you have shown not only ignorance, but arrogance.

Answer 13

God cannot exist becuase he would contridict himself. If he is omnipotent and omniscient I see no motive behind creating anything or doing anything. I also have have I list of 27 fallacies against God:



I. Omnipotence v.s. Omniscience.



1. God is Omnipotent

2. God is Omniscience

3. Does God know his future course of action for sure as it is set in stone?



Yes- He can't change it, its set in stone, God is not Omnipotent.

No- There is something he does not know, he is not Omniscience.



II. Omnipotence v.s. Limits.



Can God become more powerful?



Yes- He is not Omnipotent to begin with, an Omnipotent being is at maximum power.

No- That is something he cannot do then, he is not Omnipotent as an Omnipotent being can do anything.



III. Omnipotence & Omniscience v.s. Omnibenevolence & Free Will.



1. God is Omnipotent, Omnisciencent, and Omnibenevolence.

2. God knows if your going to hell or not before your born.



#2 is false.- God is not Omnisciencent

#2 is true.- God is not Omnibenevolent



IV. Occam's Razor.



1. The Big Bang, Chemical and Macro evolution, and the evolution of altruistic genes for survival fill in the gaps where God was once needed for science.

2. There is no reason for a God.

3. God should not be believed in.



V. Transcendence v.s. Creation.



1. God is Transcendence

2. God surpasses physical existence.

3. God cannot create.

4. God defies himself.



VI. Wants.



1. God is perfect.

2. A perfect being cannot want.

3. God wanted to create the universe.



VII. The Quick Fix.



1. There are many problems in the world and much evil.

2. God is Omnibenevolent

3. God could stop this evil and not interfere with free will (he can do this as he is Omnipotent)

4. Evil still exists

5. God is not either Omnipotent or Omnibenevolent.



VIII. The Disproportionate Hell.



1. God is Omnibenevolent.

2. Hell exists.

3. Hell is infinite punishment.

4. Nothing anyone could do could merit up to Hells punishment. (Sending someone to hell for a mass murder would be like the electric chair for someone who barley broke the speed limit.)

5. God is not Omnibenevolent.



IX. Perfection.



1. God is a perfect creator.

2. We are not perfect.

3. A perfect creator creating something not perfect would be like a perfct dishwasher not washing dishes perfectly.

4. God is not perfect.



X. Hume's Dictum.



1. Only physical things can be proven.

2. God is not physical.

3. God cannot be proven no matter what.



XI. God, the Dictator.



1. God punishes people who do not follow him extremely harshly.

2. God is a dictator.



XII. Excepting of Christ.



1. God is Omnibenevolent.

2. If you do not except Christ you go to Hell.

3. There are people who have never heard of Christ.

4. Those people will go to hell.

5. That's like a teacher giving half of a class lectures on Astrophysics for a year, and the other half nothing. At the end the teacher gives a huge test on Astrophysics that counts for 100 % of there final grade.

6. God is not Omnibenevolent.



XIII. The Unremarkable Planet.



1. We have been chosen as the one and only race that God shows himself to.

2. There are possibly billions of other races, much smarter and better than us.

3. We will only exist for a few million years.

4. Why should we be chosen?



XIV. The Sadomasochistic God.



1. Jesus (God) died on the cross for our sins.

2. See VII.

3. God is Sadomasochistic



XV. Picking and Chosing.



Some people accept parts of the bible as true and other parts needing for a modern day addaption. Why though can't they adapt the Virgin Birth or the death of Jesus? How do they choose what to adapt?



XVI. Telephone.



The game of telephone is an interesting one. Many people sit around in a circle and whisper a sentance to the next person. By the time it comes aaround it is usally much different from the original. The bible is 2, 000 years old and has been translated and possibly corrupted into many different versions. How then can you accept any of it as truth?



XVII. Tech v.s. Religion.



The worlds population that is religious in a timeframe is inverse to its technology. Also Statistically people with higher IQs are less religious.



XVII. The Myth Cycle.



Myths have fallen and risen over the ages countless numbers of times, all have eventually been scientifically disproven. What makes our modern day religions any different?



XIX. The Burden of Proof.



1. The burden of proof falls on the one who makes the original assumption (that God exists).

2. No proof has been brought foward.

3. We should then doubt the assumption.



XX. Can God Guess?



1. To guess you have to have little or no knowledge of a subject.

Can God Guess?

Yes- Then he is not Omniscience.

No- Then he is not Omnipotent.



XXI. Can God violate his Omnibenevolence?



Yes- He is not Omnibenevolent.

No- He is not Omnipotent.



XXII. Pain in Heaven.



Can you, in heaven cause pain to another in heaven?

Yes- God is not Omnibenevolent, he would never allow that.

No- God does not accept Free Will.



XXIII. Skyhook.



Where did God come from?

1. He was always here.

2. He made himself.

If he made himself then who made the one that made himself make himself.

2. Results in an infinite chain devoid of any sense. An infinite God making God.

Besides God is a scientific asumption and should be treated as such. The idea that an ultimatly complex being just came together or always existed is unthinkable.



XIV. The Soul?



A. Soul Ex Nihilo

At what point does the soul come into a life form? Is it formed along side it in an evolutionary process or does it appear out of nothingness (violating the second law of thermodynamics).

B. Occam's Razor

If human and animal emotions and actions can be explained through electrical currents and chemical reactions what is the need for belief in a soul?

C. The Pyramid

Choices and behavior is controlled by psychology. But what is that controlled by?

Choices and behavior

Psychology

Biology

Biochemistry

Chemistry

Physics

Math

Math, is an exact science. It cannot be changed(2+2 will never equal 5) If our choices are mere branches of math, then they cannot change, we are mechanical animals, advanced computers.

D. Dissection

When you dissect a human, or when a human is cut open and is still alive, where is the soul?

If its transparent shouldn't it float away, or is it anchored to the body. Yet, if it is anchored to the body, what releases it at death?

E. Transcendence v.s. Control

As we cannot see or physically feel the soul, it is transcendent, and if it is transcendent how can it control, come it contact with, a physical body?

F. The Universes Eternal Memory

If you lose all your memory right before you die and are reduced to a mentally retarded individual, how as does a soul retrieve all these memories?



XV. The Grand Unified Theory.



The Grand unified theory, or GUT is one of several very similar theories or models in physics that unify what are considered three "fundamental" gauge symmetries: hypercharge, the weak force, and quantum chromodynamics.

If this is so it would be proven that the universe has a chosen path it must take.

And if this is so then how do we make choices, and how can we be held responsible for choosing wrong? No good God would punish something that couldn't decide for itself.



XVI. A Cyclic Universe



The cyclic model is a brane cosmology model of the creation of the universe, derived from the earlier ekpyrotic model. It was proposed in 2001 by Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University and Neil Turok of Cambridge University. The theory describes a universe exploding into existence not just once, but repeatedly in endless cycles of death and rebirth.

The theory could potentially explain why a mysterious repulsive form of energy known as the "cosmological constant", and which is accelerating the expansion of the universe, is several orders of magnitude smaller than predicted by the standard Big Bang model.

If this is so there was no first moment of creation, disproving the notion of a creator.



XVII. The Demolition.



Pascal's Wager- Is absurd as there are infinite possible Gods.

All the Gold in China- Is absurd. Have you searched the universe to determine there is no unicorns, or no Thor?

Because the Bible Says So- If that was true I could write a book saying I'm God. And I would be God.



After these ideas have been eliminated there leaves only one theistic argument left. "You've Just Gotta Have Faith."

Point one.- While I could just have faith in God. Atheism is an equally appealing thing to have faith in. What makes yours more worthy to have faith in?

Point two- Your going to trust possibly the most important thing ever, where we came from and will go, not to science and reason, but to faith?!

Point three- Gods existence is equal to the existence of a rhino in a shoe box. You do not know for sure if there's a rhino in your unopened shoe box or not, but you'd have to be insane to believe that there is. With all the small space and scarcity of rhinos in a shoe box, its hard to believe in it. What makes God any different? His twenty six other fallacies are even greater than the ones of a rhino in a shoe box. The chance that a rhino is in fact in a shoe box is higher than the chance that God exists. So believing in him is like believing there is in fact a rhino in your shoe box.

The less validity an idea has is equal to its number of fallacys. With 27 fallacys against God and two (size and scaricity of a rhino) against the idea of a shino in a shoebox we can determine it is more plausible to find a rhino in your next shoe box than god existing. As all fallacys are imposibilitys and one idea cannot be more impossible than another, though you cannot disprove God per se, you can reduce his probability of existance to almost nothing.And ya f god cause he ****** up the world 9 11 (God)didnt do anything.