02-01-2004, 12:04 PM
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Confirmed User
Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: See sig
Posts: 6,989
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Quote:
Originally posted by latinasojourn
religious dogma does not stand up to any intellectual scrutiny.
religion is a cultural artifact. what you believe depends on where, and when you were born in the world.
if the human timeline is the length of a yardstick, our contemporary experience is about .0001 inches.
just a few hundred years ago people thought the earth was flat, today we've walked on the moon, water may probably be on mars, and man has created complex mammals through asexual reproduction.
religion does have plenty of benefit for many people---it relieves human stress and suffering, and makes people feel better, it can "cure" much psychosomatic illness, though it does nothing for organic disease. just once i like to see the faith healer curing people of cancer at the civic auditorium get in his mercedes and drive over to the community hospital and work his magic on the oncology ward 
if you put religion in a balance and asked whether it is good for mankind or bad, it would probably be a wash.
while the salvation army is housing homeless in warming centers in the winter, camel jockeys are trying to figure out how to steal airplanes and destroy buildings---all in the name of their "god".
nothing changes much, from the crusades to the beefs in ireland, to the beefs in israel and palestine---it's always my god is the only true god, and you are an infidel if the don't believe in my god, and are not worthy or life.
so, to answer the original question:
no, though i was raised in a "god-fearing" family, i do not go to church.
religion and morality are not the same thing.
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Just to say basically the above is everything I could not be bothered to type.
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Ignorance is never bliss.
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