http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bjTXuVbfA4...+arms+meme.gif

fiddy dino's

I'm glad I amused someone (than myself) tonight...and I might surprise you what I could wrap my head around - the lie you just stated is something my head just wrapped around and spit out as bullshit.

Yes there are similarities due to the rampant plagiarism of the time - these fucks like Constantine were known for ripping off any verses that would help pacify and control the sheeple.

Good read here - http://www.deism.com/bibleorigins.htm

Originally Posted by adendreams

haha I can't believe God fucked a married women...what an asshole
Sorry my heresay took you into name calling rage again.

See I know there is no All Mighty Creator.

You THINK there may be one and you are just hedging your bets for when you croak...but if you REALLY believed there was this GOD watching all (like worse than the fucking NSA) then you wouldn't be in this den of filth reading all this blasphemy and letting it taint your faith.

:stoned

ADG

that Bill hicks shit cracked me the fuckup - thanks ADG. Have you seen the Doc on his life - great Doc...funny mofo. Died too young

All religions and cultures don't arrive at the same beliefs due to plagiarism nor do they share the same internal sense where on a vertical axis, "up" is closely associated with spirituality, holiness, purity, divinity and so on and where "down" is closely associated with the profane, with evil etc. just by coincidence, as one example.

You don't understand religion largely because you don't understand brain function. This is why i can forgive your simplistic and nonsensical replies. It's not your fault. Your conscious and unconscious processes are only loosely connected and you consciously struggling to explain strong unconscious feelings/emotions. Your brain is not a computer. Your brain is a decision maker. Your brain at the behest of your DNA, has only a simple objective as does every cell in your body and that is to survive, reproduce and to insure the safety and survival of your offspring. Your brain is not overly concerned with conscious thinking which costs a great deal of energy and more often than not, no benefit. You say silly things because your brain has an area which does nothing but help your conscious mind make shit up to explain unconscious feelings, emotions and actions. Your brain relies on short cuts lies to you all day long because quite simply, its to your benefit in terms of decreased energy consumption. For example, you can touch the end of your nose with your finger. You will believe that both your nose and the finger felt the other at the exact same instant. However, the signal from your finger has to travel approximately 100 times further to the brain than that in your nose it will arrive much later but your brain will say "yep, happened at the same time, lets move on". You have a part of the brain that is fully dedicated to lying to others and to yourself, all day long. This area of the brain and its function fascinates me. It's called Gazzaniga's Interpreter Module. It's only purpose is to provide a "makes sense explanation" and move on. Even funnier is that you will believe the thing you just made up (read Rochards posts). Just as those who are deeply religious do. Just as those who are not do. Just as you are doing. Just as anyone with severe ADD can make up absurd shit, say it convincingly, with absolute confidence and you'll even buy into it in the moment even when you know its BS. If you were to revisit that discussion later to confront the lie, his brain, without any hesitation will just keep going, make something up instantaneously and keep going, often making even less sense and with the individual often being no less convincing and confident. But... this is what we all do.

We all live in a Matrix-like world that is largely the creation of our own minds. The world around us is what we believe it to be. It's what we each interpret it to be. A sunny day can be beautiful or miserable, depending on who you ask.... but it goes much much much deeper than that. Your brain is a fantastic organ. Its convinced you that you are free and have free will, though the vast majority of the time, you are a complete slave to it's unconscious processes. In fact, we are the only species that is born and then remains completely helpless and dependent for a decade just so our brains can develop. You don't control it... it controls you. Its greatest trick is making you feel united and convinced that it just isn't so.

To the point of religion, logic and truthfulness of the stories/fables/parables have nothing to do with it success and survival and our own innate tendency of being drawn to religious beliefs. Nearly all religions explain and codify in law, some very basic ideas or senses which are innate within us, which we all experience and feel. The more important of which, is a sense of morality. We have an innate sense of morality/moral responsibility and right and wrong. Killing, incest, helping others, stealing, justice, adultery etc etc etc. These are not religious rules. These are instinctive senses and we all feel them to some degree or another. Some, even proven to be present in infants. These basic internal rules became very important to safety/survival/reproduction as we moved from hunter/gatherers to living in larger, sedentary social groups. Larger social groups, means a new rules for interaction to get along and survive. Providing a moral law and standards of conduct have clear and obvious survival benefits. In fact, our entire legal system today is based SOLELY on our own collective and instinctive/innate sense of right and wrong and morality. In fact, state and federal statutes are little more than religious books defining a religion and its sects.

As with any religion, the legal system too can feel arbitrary and unfair or "unjust".

But as with religion, you can only feel that way if you don't understand its motives.

The interesting thing about these arguments is that you are, in a very real way trying to argue against the existence of our legal system, you are trying to argue against things that almost all of us feel deep inside (yet, might explain in different ways). In attacking biblical stories, you are trying to point to a wrongfully convicted car thief to provide absolute proof that the legal system is a sham and unnecessary and that those who believe in it are somehow inferior to you, due to those beliefs. It should be obvious to you, why that argument will lose every single time.

The true wisdom lies in the understanding that you will never win and why. Not in regurgitating centuries old arguments for the 10 billionth time as if you're somehow offering intelligent insight.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh you are even more amusing and full of bullshit than adendreams...though that is somewhat hard for one to achieve.

I presume you are a human being. Human beings are hyper-social creatures. In fact, even the size of our brains and its rapid increase in size in the modern age of man, happened specifically due to the increased need to manage larger and larger social networks and to manage increasingly complex social interaction. You however, have set the life goal of living in the woods alone, in complete isolation and who admits his best friend is not a human being at all, but a dog.

So yeah... you're clearly firing on all cylinders.

Fucking Idiots

The Squealer seems like an intelligent dude (although I don't have time to read that wall of text).

You may be completely missing my point here, but I'm not against religion - I'm against the brainwash of kids and keeping them away from learning about reality.

"Reality" is a highly subjective concept and largely nothing more than each individuals interpretation of the world around them. My point is that you are no more right or wrong than anyone else. You are arguing for your own interpretation or understanding of reality and mocking that of others. You will not agree with Donny. Donny will not agree with you. You will point to a 1000 pieces of evidence to refute his beliefs, he will point to 1000 pieces of evidence to refute yours... You each will give less weight to the others "facts" and more to your own and subject your own and the others arguments to a wide array of cognitive bias's to pervert the information into something it isn't, safely declare yourself right again,.... and on it goes. His need to believe what he believes is driven for the most part, by the same neurological mechanisms that drive you to believe what you believe. The difference is that the individuals need to believe in something beyond themselves and to believe we have a purpose in this life will always win when you can't counter with anything other than "its just not true" and when there is no necessity or benefit/advantage in doing so (as it relates to the survival and reproduction and the safety and security of offspring).

dude you are coming in with some seriously esoteric shit..but there is such a thing as truth and reality..Dinosaurs did exist...radio carbon dating works...the bones tell a very real story about REALITY.

This aint the Matrix man but take one of the pills and wake the fuckup

Whose reality? Whose "real story"? Does an ant walking on a power line experience the same "reality" as you do? Do these "facts" impact the life of the ant or his limited understanding of his existence? Does the ant have his own "very real story" and "reality" that he also deeply feels people need to wake up to?

Does it matter?

The primary issue in your ranting is that YOU are unhappy. YOU feel the need to change others. YOU think most of the world is wrong and now YOU are on a futile crusade to change the beliefs of others.

Life is short.

Smile. Love the person you're with and your family and enjoy each day. You will never get these wasted moments back.

Did you come from a christian upbringing my man or did you just take too much acid at some point in your life?

You can't address the point of the existence of Dino bones that are IN REALITY millions of years old?

How about this Mr. Existentialist - answer these two questions with only yes or no answers:

1. Do you believe that Dinosaur bones are from large creatures that inhabited this planet millions of years before modern humans did?

2. Do you think its wrong to tell impressionable children that these bones are from creatures that lived side by side humans just a few thousand years ago.

(disregard question 2 if your answer to question 1 is No)

Fact : We never had a black president elected before now because he would have been black.


:1orglaugh

I didn't deny the existence of dinosaurs, nor the timeline of evolution or the age of the planet. I never mentioned dinosaurs at all or addressed dinosaurs at all nor did I say anything to indicate I had christian beliefs. I didn't express an opinion on the video or address it in any way, shape or form. What an odd deflection based on absolutely nothing at all other than your minds own confabulations.

And then you have this guy walk in with his rambling pseudo science drivel based on observations of the perversion called modern society (just look how well that is working since it is run by religion based thinking - model of efficiency and rationality right - wrong - and claiming all that as if it were absolute fact. :1orglaugh

Sorry buddy but someone stating that they would rather not be part of the collective insanity and think for themselves...wow...what a concept - and you find that strange and somehow makes them defective? "Group think" techniques work very well for controlling large numbers of people...right they certainly do and that "primate" need to be part of a group to survive runs very deep in our fears-most people would rather die than speak in front of a group of people so yes, we did evolve in groups but we also can think individually. Group think has been exploited far to long...sure works for cults like religions and groups like the Nazis and Republicans even whole countries.

Nice simplistic thinking and slogans such as "You are either with us or against us" and who can forget the classic "If you don't like it here move" or "Either you think/believe like we do OR you are going to hell / we will kill you / we will marginalize you ... you fill in the blank with whatever".

Religions do nothing except poorly explain complicated ideas to simpleminded people and throw in some controlling behavioral rules while at it all while promising a big pay off at the end if you play nice - sorry but some of us actually like to think for ourselves and are so easily fooled by "group think" tactics regardless who they threaten you and your convenient "social order". :thumbsup

Ooo look who had their first day of philosophy 101 but can't recognize basic false equivalence.

Ask Paul M. I think he was booked on that same cruise!

I've never studied philosophy, nor have I read any works of known philosophers that I can think of as I type this. I've never found philosophy appealing nor have I ever thought that philosophy offers any satisfactory explanations of human bevaviors beyond interpretations of observed behaviors.

Furthermore ones beliefs are rooted in moral judgements and intuitive reasoning and as I've said, both are unconscious processes where decisions (like/dislike) occur almost instantaneously. You aren't even aware of these decisions and preferences consciously until AFTER they've been made. The conscious.mind then attempts to explain the unconscious decision - where more often than not, it has no information as to how that decision was made. The minds explanation of that instantaneous decision or preference has little to do with conscious thought processes. In fact, ones explanations and arguments are usually nonsensical and. Irrational post hoc explanations of unconscious processes which and are interestingly, irreversible regardless of the evidence presented after the fact through continued debate or discussion... Which is why positions are rarely, if ever reversed. That's not philosophy 101, it's neuroscience and moral psychology 101.

What a great post. Too bad it's wasted on that idiot :thumbsup

Well, you see...an ant really can't think now can it. So it probably does experience the same reality that you do.

As for the rest of us NO. :thumbsup

Not surprising that in the absence of anything intelligent to say, you decided to attack a metaphor as if it was intended to be a literal example, though the actual creature was clearly irrelevant to the point being made. One of the many pluses of being dumb is that you likely have a diminished capacity for shame and embarrassment .... so i'm certain you'll try again.

And yet you go on a 16 year old stoner's understanding of near solipsism to discount the very real fact that people believing in things that aren't empirically evidence based can have an actual detrimental affect on his life when those people vote against stem cell research that might save his life or you have a president chasing Gog and Magog around the desert bankrupting an economy.

You berate someone for not understanding the vast majority of people are jews, christians and muslims, religions that are explicit subsequent derivatives to the point where some muslims refer to Islam as "Religion 3.0" or "Christianity 2.0" and then you say it's not all plagiarism when it very clearly was. You might not be as clear as you think you are on this point.

Although your wording is unclear you seem amazed that cultures don't like "down" and it's a coincidence that the direction you're buried when you die, fall to your death and sink and drown is bad but that up, where the life giving sun and rain comes from and where no human has ever been able to go to escape their predators would be an ideal direction. It's like you haven't given it a seconds rational thought.

That the legal system evolved from pretty much the same place as religion does in no way make it equivalent in terms of function and comparable in any other meaningful way. A society where brain function could be altered to remove our collective need for a spirituality/meaning in randomness/higher power would get along fine now we are no long cave dwellers, a society genetically engineered to be amoral with no understanding of right or wrong or justice would not.

That arguing religion, or politics or Justin Bieber on the internet is like playing a tennis match with each opponent on a separate court is largely besides the point.

This isn't a falsely equivalent world, 1000 arguments from a fantasy book aren't equivalent to the results from 1000 scientific studies and contrary to your insinuation cognitive bias and subconscious control aren't impenetrable fields, merely temporary road blocks. The efficacy of attacking literalist beliefs lies in places like: http://www.ex-christian.net/topic/50...-deconversion/ the value lies in body autonomy, scientific progress and social freedom. You are using neuroscience in an absolute dogmatic way, as though people don't change their beliefs when they very, very clearly do, they merely have a strong tendency not to do it on the spot.

I don't think anyone cares about liberal or cultural christians believing in a higher power but I do think people care about insulating against 30 million people believing in end times prophecy, militant and organised infiltration of governance and things like steering foreign policy on Israel based largely on desire of a second coming. This isn't innate. This isn't an emergent property common across all civilizations that cannot be controlled. America is quite literally alone among it's peers in this. England, Australia, Canada, France, Germany etc provide ample juxtaposition of relatively pacified religiosity and some are excellent cultural control groups. Creationism "controversies" in these countries are American imports in the same way American christians are influencing Uganda.

Not of course that posting on porn forum achieves anything in any meaningful way, but there is no need to win any impossible battle with belief. It is however clearly possible for literalism and the worst excesses that stem from it to be minimized to an acceptable level and perhaps even posting on a forum is part of that osmosis.

Great post. TheSquealer has become a slave to the scientific field of neuro-science. A very new field that has only touched the surface in its understanding of the human brain/mind. We are more than the expression of our biology. It is a mystery that we may never solve.

While it does seem like humans have an innate need for some form of spirituality/religion, when we create a fantasy world for ourselves that makes mortal enemies and others into lesser beings based on fairy tales we put the world and its people into great danger.

We are an incredible species, we have figured out how to destroy ourselves and every living thing on this planet on our own. The most evil violent people in mankind's history could do everything in their power to destroy every person and thing in its path and they would fail. Today that's no longer so.

We are perilously close to nuclear weapons being in the hands of several Islamic nations and their agents of terror who believe their religious fairy tale is reality, that every non-believer must die.

For the survival of mankind these religions need to be taken away. What this world needs now is a universal law of religious intolerance, beginning with the prohibition of any nation that is a theocracy followed by religious disarmament, shut down every temple, every church, every mosque. In a few generations people will be born without this lunacy in their lives, they can still be spiritual, what they won't be allowed to do is construct an alternate reality for themselves where other people and nations are their enemies based on a fantasy world they created for themselves. These three religions that share the same God - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - outlived their purpose long ago and are now holding this planet hostage. The conception of a Creator three thousand years ago by a small tribe of nomadic herdsmen that elected them as his Chosen people was a quaint story in its time and place, and has now outgrown its time and place and wrought more harm than good to this world. Note the progression, small tribe of people now named Jews fighting for their identity, survival and nationhood imagines an omnipotent Creator of the entire Universe who will guide them and ensure they will they defeat each of their enemies in succession. A grand fairy tale is written, a fairy tale these people believe was written in the Heavens by the Creator himself. A thousand years later a small group of Jewish heretics nullify the fairy tale and write their own. The majority of Jews reject the new fairy tale as the work of crackpots. The heretics wander off to spread the new fairy tale and as their numbers grow they now demonize the Jews, they are now Satan's children, killing and humiliating them using the new fairy tale to support their hatred. So caught up in the new fairy tale the Christians force 'the good news' upon everyone in their path and they build their empire across the world. Meanwhile two thousand years after Moses and six hundred years after Jesus, back in the part of the world where the original fairy tale was imagined there are a people who have no fairy tale at all. A young man named Mohammed from these sad people reads the two fairy tales and he liked them very much. He discovers something, Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael, Ishmael being the first born. But in the fairy tale Ishmael was passed over, the children of Isaac's son Jacob inherit the promises from God, they became the Chosen. Mohammed's people are the descendants of Ishmael, he reads the fairy tale over and over and can find no reason for being overlooked by God, a horrible mistake had been made. Mohammed writes his own fairy tale correcting the injustice done to his people, he decides he is a prophet just like Moses and Jesus and anything that comes out of his idiot head is coming from God. He wants and expects the world to accept him as the new prophet, most especially the Chosen people from the first fairy tale, he has the utmost respect for Abraham and Moses, he seeks approval from their people and is crazy enough to think he's going to get it. The Jews of course had no use for his revisionist fairy tale. So Mohammed does what any religious prophet would do, he slaughters them. And he writes in his fairy tale that Jews are subhumans, apes and pigs and they all must die. And then it grows to everybody else on earth who doesn't believe in his God must die.

All three of these religions and their fairy tales are intolerant and filled with bigotry and hate, and with each one it got progressively worse. The concept of a 'chosen people' is inherently bigoted, you can find in the Jewish Talmud opinions from Jewish rabbis that Jews are 'different', even suggesting that as a race they are supernatural. It's a dangerous idea and no people should understand that more than the Jews themselves. Christians preach eternal damnation in the fires of Hell, accept Jesus Christ as your saviour or suffer the consequences. A peaceful religion that quickly mutated into one of hatred, intolerance, mind and body control. And Islam, pure hatred.

These three fairy tales' continued existence endanger the world. We should rid the world of them. Create new fairy tales for a modern world, fairy tales that don't have thousands of years of blood and vengeance dripping from them. And when a new fairy tale gets perverted into what these three are - ban them. Most of us live in democratic countries where we have hate speech laws already. I don't care what's inside people's minds that causes them to hang on to these religions. I know every one of them will survive without them, and the majority of the world will be better off for their disappearance.

Great post Mutt :thumbsup

Of all the crazy stories in the bible, Noah's Ark is easily the most ludicrous.

That said, foaming-at-the mouth atheists like adendreams are just as annoying and obnoxious as religious fanatics.

Your whole mission here? Is an attempt at brainwashing... I hate to spoil your meds emancipation but one day you will realize this and you will understand what this is.

HAHA silly fucking humans

:stoned

ADG

First, let me say that I agree with you in the hatred and bigotry and hypocrisy and obvious lack of congruence between the ever repetitious remarks stating that "God is all forgiving and all loving and all peaceful" which are then all too often, followed by ideas such as "he burned the city to ashes and incinerated every man, woman and child because he's a vengeful God". Further, i've always had a problem with what i consider to be a major logical flaw in the notion that an all powerful, almighty God needs to be loved and worshiped by the deeply flawed creatures he created. That sounds an awful lot like an expression of human insecurity and human emotions... not the will of a perfect being. I should also point out that the Qu'ran is basically the Old Testament and Islam is largely the teachings of the Old Testament. Many people confuse societal conventions and extreme behaviors with commonly accepted religious beliefs. A religion cannot be "evil". Only people can be evil. A religion cannot commit acts of "evil", only people can. And though many would argue that certain people from certain nations and affiliated with certain religions are following what they are taught and as such, committing acts of evil... i would say those people would be using some other idea/religion/grievance or whatever to justify their acting out, in the complete absence of any particular reason.

Here are my thoughts. I am in no position to say there is or isn't a God. A rational person has to conclude that if you cannot prove a negative, then there is an obvious logical and scientific problem with disproving the existence of God. So... to me, I leave God out of organized religion as most do not share similar (or at least compatible or complementary) beliefs. I attempt to draw a clear line in distinguishing the concept of "god" and "religion".

As for religions...

I believe that we do what we do because there is a benefit to survival and reproduction. I believe we only do what makes basic sense in that respect. When behaviors are not useful, they are quickly discarded or left behind.

That's not to say that everything we do right now, this afternoon at 5:40pm has a direct link to that purpose but that our behaviors evolved over millions of years and at their core are still those primary interests driving them in a broad sense.

The rapid shift from nomadic lifestyles to sedentary lifestyles, the advent of agriculture created the evolutionary problem of increasingly large communities and cities. Guys who ran around with sharp sticks trying to stab a mastodon to survive, now have to live with 1000s of other people. This created a very new problem for man and one that man was forced to adapt to very quickly. The brain was forced to adapt to a new, rapidly changing SOCIAL reality. It did adapt. It adapted very well. It grew very fast in a very short period of time. In fact, it grew so fast and evolved so fast that we became the only animals on the planet born early, due to the brains size and the fact that it still needs to grow after birth. By "born early" i mean that no other animal is born and then almost completely helpless for a decade or more of its life. That is unique to humans and the modern age of man.

Why did the brain grow so fast in a short period of time?

In nearly all living creatures with a brain, the size of the brain is directly proportional to the size of the social networks they must manage. The brain grew rapidly and the vast majority of the new functionality specifically serve those new needs.

With a rapidly changing social reality and the need to get along in larger and larger settlements - there was a need for something else beyond physical adaptations. Getting along in large groups requires rules, laws and societal conventions. Not as a device for "control" as simpletons on this board love to say, which implies evil geniuses at the top, cleverly manipulating millions of idiots and created a system which properly predicted the rise and immense success of a religion... but as a means of maintaining order, safety, security, mitigating health risks and so on... all of which are still necessary for survival and reproduction.

What are the 10 commandments and what do most religions provide? Moral laws. When thinking about the story of Abraham coming down from the mountaintop, considering the pageantry and details surrounding the event, we tend to overlook the fact that these Commandments were not novel ideas. They were not new ideas being introduced to a society of inbred, drunken baboons. In fact, they are likely as old as mankind and they are simply a regurgitation of what we all tend to believe already. Partially intuitive and innate, partially learned as a child. These ideas, such as harming others is wrong (unless morally justified). Rape is wrong. Stealing is wrong. Murder is wrong. Adultery is wrong and the need for a sense of justice and fairness are concepts learned as a child. These are not randomly chosen values passed down from the mountain top, these are core moral values that we all inherently understand. It could be argued that laws existed but their enforcement was often arbitrary and done so at the will of despotic and in many cases, psychopathic rulers. Religion provided a framework of moral law that was above the law of rulers on earth. A clever move if you think about it.

All religions, first and foremost provide a framework for moral law and values so that a society may increase their chances of survival as a group.

Religions for the most part, define pure and profane and place a high value on purity and pure behaviors and create rituals around these concepts so that they are practiced. You can't eat a pig because it wallows in shit. Animals have to be killed, handled and prepared a certain way. You can't be a woman and go into a religious temple while menstruating, there are rules for handling bodies, rules for how you wipe your ass and eat your food and so on. These again are rules who's first motive is to guard against disease and illness for the benefit of the group. These rules are mostly based on the human emotion of disgust. What does disgust do? It keeps you from eating rotten food. It keeps you from mating with an unfit mate (ill, unhealthy, stinky etc - shutting down your desire to have sex). It keeps you from handling shit. It keeps you from eating dirty food, carrying disease. When you accidentally do these things, your body has a physiological response - you puke in an attempt to purge these things from you. This again is a basic human emotion relating to safety and survival, shrouded in religion and ritual. But shrouding it in religion and ritual and even law/moral law/social conventions makes you many more times to adhere to those practices, protecting both yourself and the group.

Religions do what any organized group does... they require sacrifice and giving things up. Just as joining Los Zetas is going to require you to likely kill people or joining an East LA gang is going to require a beat down, getting gang raped or murder or 2 or joining a frat or most other groups requires some form of hazing... the principle is the same. The more you give up for that thing, the higher the cost you pay, the more you tend to value it and remain loyal to it. Muslims seem to be more devout than Christians because a lot more is required of a Muslim, where Christianity has largely devolved into a "no one is going to tell me how to worship God" type situation, where most don't even go to church or pray but call themselves Christians and where Old Testament fire and brimstone and inflexible rules were more replaced with highly flexible concepts of peace and love and being nice. This again, in my mind ties closely to the success of the group...devotion and adherence to those moral laws are now further strengthened individuals increased loyalty to the group and as such, its rules and practices.

Religions do what nearly all organized groups do in in terms of creating rituals. These rituals reinforce the beliefs. These rituals force you to be continually reminded of the groups beliefs. Bikers have rituals. Gang bangers have rituals. Fisherman have rituals. Sororities have rituals. Every group tends to have rituals or some sort. The rituals always reinforce the idea of the group and its beliefs. Again, strengthening the group and enhancing its chances of survival.

Religions do another thing that any organized group does. In addition to rituals, it creates manners of dress, style, behaviors and speech and similar identifying things, so that members of that group can not only distinguish themselves from others and other belief systems but so that they may identify each other and thus, treat each other differently. Would you rather be wandering a harsh Arab desert 200 years ago as a random person or as a Muslim, easily identified as a Muslim?

Your body is a temple? To further enhance the survival chances of the group, there are almost always rules about taking care of your body.

.....continued

Regarding the stories and mythology and folklore. Don't all organized groups do this? Doesn't a biker gang have all kinds of stories of deeds that exemplify those traits in a person that are important to them and the group? A football team? An army? A state? A nation? Are the stories 100% true? It doesn't really matter? What matters is the purpose they serve. What is important, is their motive. The examples they set of how those who followed their traditions, beliefs and so on, used those beliefs to excel in some way. They illustrate how following those beliefs and behaviors benefited them. They illustrate how those beliefs and behaviors will benefit you. I am not saying that makes them right or 100% true,... I am saying there is a very logical purpose and rational function a midst what appears on the surface to be the complete and total abandonment of rationality.

*** A side note is that your brain prefers metaphor to fact. Your brain prefers stories. Your response to the stories is much stronger than your response to a list of rules and facts. Its all much more relatable and easier to process. Your brain is not interested in complex cognitive processes and understanding complex ideas which cost a great deal of energy, as much as it is in efficiency. Pictures and stories and metaphors are efficient. No one should be surprised by parables and metaphor in religion.

All of the mythology in religions, more often than not, serve to reinforce moral law and basic practices relating to health and safety which really all tie into improved odds of survival and reproduction as people organized into larger societies and were forced to live together and get along. Is that an antiquated system? No longer needed? Well, think about that. Are your chances of recovering after losing your job and home in a hurricane improved, worsened or the exact same, by your having close ties to a large church and its many members? What about needed money for medical procedures or whatever? I don't think that from a behavioral perspective or in the ways they still offer a survival advantage, that they are antiquated at all.

One could really go on forever about the advantages of religion to the safety and survival of a community be it 1,000, 3,000 or 5,000 years ago or during hurricane Katrina or any other catastrophic event.

Not liking some aspects of religion or focusing strictly on the negatives, doesn't mean that religious beliefs do not still serve many useful purposes... hence their continued existence and obvious strength. Summarily dismissing all those with religious beliefs (the majority of the worlds population, including multitudes of highly intelligent, well educated people) is no more rooted in understanding the physical world we live in than religion is.

BTW... i am not for or against religion. I am simply saying that its akin to being for or against rain or gravity. It's been here since the dawn of civilization. It's here now. It will be here until we have evolved enough that moral law is no longer an important factor in governing societies and managing social interactions. Its a human tendency to be in a group, to believe, to organize, to moralize, to believe in a higher purpose in life, to search for higher purpose, higher meaning, look for justice, explain the explainable, to believe in an afterlife and so on. Hating those facts or arguing against them is really quite pointless. Life is short. Smile. Love. Be happy and hopefully die after a long life, that was well lived.

Mr. Squealer you are by far the deepest thinking and best writer here on GFY, although you should throw a little less insults around..it slightly belittles your lofty perch.

Only one thing I can't seem to grasp - what exactly do you gain by the lengthy, well thought out and finely crafted posts? They must take an awful amount of time. And GFY? Don't you think your talents are a little wasted on the Neanderthals in this cesspool (not all...but most).

Really it's as if you went to a NYC dinner party with a dozen or so highly intellectual peers, but yet you wanted to go sit at the kids table and attempt to enlighten the children on the meaning of life. When the only thing most of them are concerned with is their high score on the Game Boy.

I guess you must just do it for yourself, which of course there is nothing wrong with, but I would venture to say just about no one reads those walls (with the exception of me and a couple others) and even if they did very few would grasp or take away anything of your fine wisdom (no sarcasm).

Maybe a book deal is in your future...just sayin.


PS I think you are underestimating the negative impact that social media and 24/7 News will eventually have on all religions, these technologies will advance the fall and demise of superstitions (religion) greatly in my opinion...and soon.

Its just conversation. Thought provoking. Not just in others, but probably mostly for my own benefit. Maybe its just that the ideas and concepts are complex enough that its my way of reasoning through them. Dunno really.

These remarks rely on the base assumption that the success of religion is largely due to a deficit of information and a poor understanding of the physical world. If that were true, religion would have been dying a slow death since the dawn of man.

I do absolutely maintain my opinion that willful ignorance of the true state of the universe (at least as far as our limited understanding as yet) and the deliberate concealing of these facts from their offspring are the crumbling foundations that religions are built on.

Imagine how many MORE religious people there would be today without Bohr, Galileo, da Vinci, Darwin, Einstein, Newton and others coming along.

Advanced scientific knowledge was only attainable to elite educated segments of society - now with Wikipedia and other digital means providing the mass flow of ideas and science...I predict we will start to see significant declines in fundamentalism hokus pokus within our lifetimes.

Your own explanation - relying on a deficit of information predicts a decline in religious beliefs as more information becomes available. If that were the sole or primary factor, then the decline would have began centuries or even millenia ago. With more and more information available, and being well into the "age of information", all major religions are growing, not declining. I would argue that the only thing stopping us from throwing virgins into volcano's today, are laws and shifting values and moral values... not a deeper understanding of the physical world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growth_of_religion

I dont have the time nor desire to research the growth/decline of religion but I was under the assumption that it was growing mainly only in developing nations, and staying the same or declining slightly here and in other first world countries - didn't we have a big declining period for a while after the 70's? (in the US) I wonder what effect the near mandatory requirement that southern and midwestern state politicians be hard right Christian to have a chance to get elected has on this dumbing down of our nation.

Obama is a practicing Christian. Are you sure this isn't again, your own bias at work?

I have no way of knowing this but I suspect Obama doesnt have a religious bone in his body...thats kind of the point I was making - you have to be religious, or PRETEND to be religious to get elected to high office... I wonder if Hillary will pander to this shit

It was well documented and the subject of much controversy during his first run at President... well over 10 years at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, led by the black activist Rev. Jeremiah Wright

I thought this one was interesting too in an odd way: