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:

100 Dinosaurs on Noahs Ark

http://www.atheistmemebase.com/wp-co...oahs-house.jpg

http://wp.patheos.com.s3.amazonaws.c...noahs-ark.jpeg

http://i0.wp.com/www.causticsodapodc...?fit=724%2C724

http://the-militant-atheist.org/images/free-will.jpg

Okay, there were only two...of each (and then god made them extinct later, but carbon dated them to millions of years old just to mess with scientists).

:stoned

ADG

nice posts, Squealer :thumbsup

The Bible is a great story. Guess they rebooted it.

:stoned

ADG

man i challenge any creationist to fetch me 10 different types of animal, male and female, in just one day....keep in mind theres 300.000 types of documented species of insects...so good luck finding a male and female fly or knowing the fucking difference or collecting say 10 flies male and female for the sake of genetic diversity, and knowing what they eat, and making cages and storage just for the flies ect ect....

lets not get in to the bigger animals, i mean how the fuck do you force a rhino in your boat without weapons? LOL

good luck collecting 10 pairs of anything male and female and knowing what they eat 4000 years ago and knowing that they exist at all, and being able to catch shit like tigers and elephants and aligators with sticks and stones and transporting them 1000s of km from all over the fucking globe to one place and then keeping them in 1000-s of cages, mostly separated because the males will kill off each other, and then feeding 1000-s of types of animals and hydrating them and unloading them and returning them after the flood ensuing the lions dont eat the last 2 impalas :D :D that need like 20 years to grow back to populations that are enough to feed the 2 lions or how ever much the fuck noah took....

religious people should not be allowed to vote out of general principle....

I agree completely.

The only sort of person who could possibly believe that would be someone with a subnormal IQ of perhaps 50. Anyone not retarded who thinks that is true doesn't deserve to breath the same oxygen that we do and should be killed...there I said it. Killed

To allow them to reproduce is akin to child abuse as they will deprive their children of the pleasure of actual knowledge which we as thinking being so richly deserve.