A woman's place is at the kitchen page 5

Religion does it best because religion has the most powerful message. If you can then couple that to issues of social injustice, as with the islamic suicide bombers, you have a very potent tool.

Again, religion isn’t a thing that does things to people. People use religion, religion doesn’t use them. Religion doesn’t “do” anything. Neither does patriotism, nor government, nor atheism. These are words used to describe things people do. Patriotism isn’t a force that moves throughout the world infecting people. Religion isn’t a naturally occurring machine with an innocent person strapped to an electric chair that activates when people around it read the words “I am a Christian” on it’s door. Saying religion IS evil is a misnomer.

rape isn’t a thing that does things to people. people use rape, rape doesn’t use them. rape doesn’t “do” anything. neither does torture […] saying rape IS evil is a misnomer.

Anyone who uses religion to control others instead of finding personal spirituality is being evil

lol. religions is based on controlling people. that’s the entire essence of it. the sole purpose. and it’s the very enemy of “finding personal spirituality”. that’s completely incompatible with religion.

I simply refuse to give awful people’s credit to their tools, and not their intentions themselves.

why would you give people such tools, and then hope they won’t use it? and it’s not even about giving them tools. it’s not even that bad people can use religion to make people obey them; it’s that people are made to blindly obey an arbitrary group of people without scepticism in the first place.

this is like leaving your children outside in the middle of night, bound and naked, and then saying “stripping them, binding them and abandoning them outside in the middle of the night isn’t evil, only the people that would exploit that to rape them are evil”.

[Edit] I’m going to reiterate the most important point in this whole post: Descriptions of phenomenons are not things themselves. Governments are people. Religions are people. Belief systems are had by people. “Christian” isn’t even a person, it’s a description of a person in reference to a particular feature. Early American baseball was exclusive, and the only time black or Latino players were allowed on the field is if they were exceptional. Was American Baseball racist, or were the people running that institution racist? People use the fact that we refer to groups instead of individuals to do things with anonymity, when nothing about baseball has anything to do with racism, even if the people who ran the institution made black and Latino players specified in its rules. Baseball can never have a will of its own, and neither can the concept, or any specific religion.

semantics. is the Mafia a criminal organisation? or are it’s members criminal? is rape wrong? or is a rapist wrong?

stupid semantics.

Even during the crusades, it was the people running the church that decided all Muslims needed to die, and it was the people who did not hear their god’s own words demand it, but decided to listen to these coercive people that enacted that evil. To say they only did so because the word of god was behind it is to imply that these people have no choice but to listen, that they didn’t consciously decide to do everything their leaders told them to do.

i missed that part. anyway, you need to read up on conformity. i already linked you the Milgrem experiment, i suggest you read it.

religion demands that you obey the authorities charged with interpreting the scriptures. it’s the obligatory submission that encourages people to obey such orders. history have shown this over and over again.

if anyone were to disobey, their surrounding is pressured to out these people, as in, ignore them and such. or even worse. this is the mindset of religion. most religions anyway.

and yes, patriotism can do that to. pointing out another evil is no defence.

none of them are inherently so exploitable for that cause as religion.

I think you wanted to claim “nothing else is abused as much as religion”, and I think I know the cause. As was shown before, the average theist is less intelligent than the average atheist. The average theist, therefore, is easier to convince to do things than the average atheist. A person wanting to get as much followers as possible for evil deeds rather chooses to go into religion than into business, or politics. This is not caused by religion, but rather by the interpretations of people.

rape isn’t a thing that does things to people. people use rape, rape doesn’t use them. rape doesn’t “do” anything. neither does torture […] saying rape IS evil is a misnomer.

Rape is a concept. I was actually hoping that you’d be one of the people to understand that a concept can’t be evil in itself. But I’d say you’re going into semantics and it doesn’t really show much. It is the people using or abusing a concept that are evil, the concept merely describes what it is.

no, i meant it as i said it. if you want to claim that instead, religions draws stupid people and that for that reason it also attracts evil manipulators because they’re drawn by the stupidity density, hence a way to come into contact with a potential army of idiots, be my guest.

but i say the religion itself is a setup because of the way it constructs a network of submission.

If there is ever a time where rape is a positive, happy thing, then the statement “rape is evil” is false. However, religion isn’t exclusively defined as the manipulation of uninformed people for the benefit of few. Rape is an act only evil people do, but the concept of rape didn’t cause people to be rapists. Wanting to have sex with people who don’t want to is the cause of rape, not the concept of rape itself. The word rape describes that evil desire, and isn’t in itself an evil force. Religion is the vehicle with which some people control others, just like any other institution or description of people gathering is the vehicle for whatever they’re trying to accomplish. Religion isn’t the force or cause of social injustice, people being socially unjust use religion to enact their will.

A thing being semantic doesn’t negated it, especially when the semantic definition implies the origin and thus thing to be corrected. What functional reason do you prefer to blame the grouping of a person’s beliefs than their deciding to believe that, or the people forcing them to believe that? I cannot take on the concept of rape, I can absolutely take on the concept of rapists. I cannot take on the concept of the catholic church, I can take on the authority within the catholic church for abusing their followers, and I can admonish their followers for believing in something without good reason. These semantics are important when it comes to addressing problems. Religions often defend their horrible histories with the very same semantics you’re affording them.

Rape is an act only evil people do, but the concept of rape didn’t cause people to be rapists.

how many rapists would there be if the concept of rape didn’t exist?

also, i’m not so sure only evil people ever commit rape. in fact historically, all soldiers were expected to rape the women of conquered villages. this happened in the West as recent as WW2, or even more recent, and in parts of the world is still the norm.

Religion is the vehicle with which some people control others, just like any other institution or description of people gathering is the vehicle for whatever they’re trying to accomplish. Religion isn’t the force or cause of social injustice, people being socially unjust use religion to enact their will.

you just admitted that the purpose of religion is controlling people. also you’re talking in circles, using arguments i already responded to, and i’m not gonna keep repeating myself.

What functional reason do you prefer to blame the grouping of a person’s beliefs than their deciding to believe that, or the people forcing them to believe that?

what after grammar is in the air correctness?

I cannot take on the concept of the catholic church, I can take on the authority within the catholic church for abusing their followers, and I can admonish their followers for believing in something without good reason. These semantics are important when it comes to addressing problems. Religions often defend their horrible histories with the very same semantics you’re affording them.

uhm…i don’t think they’re defending themselves by saying “we’re not doing something wrong, we’re part of a religion that does something wrong”. also, your dead wrong because it’s in fact the opposite: groups usually hide behind “we’re not as a group responsible for the actions of individuals within our group”.

and so long as religion exists, it will be exploited for causing evil for the personal benifit or some power-hungry malevolant or other evil desires, because the construct is just right for it.

pay attention: mandatory indiscriminate complience is evil. that’s the whole point.

All those who are truly in touch with Christ will see through the maliciousness of their Religious leaders, and denounce them as servants of Satan.

I am in touch with Jesus Christ at all times and I directly recive HIS word. HIS word is the word of love. Any religious person fool enough to believe that the word of the Devil is actually the word of Christ is not a person of God.

You have a confusing disassociation between the acts of individuals and what those acts can be described as. The concept of rape cannot be fought against, and it couldn’t be removed from the world. It’s a description of a thing that does happen. Religion is, likewise, a concept and not in itself a force to do anything. I can comfortably say that you’re just trying to attack religion instead of the people who manipulate religions to make others do evil things. Having a religion doesn’t equate to having a complete lack of self awareness or ability to make decisions. Individuals choose to follow beliefs for which authority is based in faith and not logic, and thus their failure of logic and self subservience is to blame, not the fact that they are part of a religion.

Individuals choose to follow beliefs for which authority is based in faith and not logic, and thus their failure of logic and self subservience is to blame, not the fact that they are part of a religion.

but those people exist. i showed you 75% of people would commit an act of evil under the right conditions, just because they were told.

religion makes people susceptable to exploitation. that is all. we’re done here.

Religion DOES NOT make one susceptable to exploitation!! Religion is meant to enlighten those of the truth of the universe, Chrisitanity in particular.

It’s funny how you say these terrible and hateful things about religious people while completely, and conviently ignoring my statements.

Religion is not the source of violence. Sin, evil and malicousness is the source of violence. All those who would do harm to their brothers and sisters are not people of God.

Religion is good. Love is good. Christ is good.

Please tell me, what happened in your life to hate people of God so?

but those people exist. i showed you 75% of people would commit an act of evil under the right conditions, just because they were told.

And since 75% of people are irrational idiots, this should come as no surprise.

religion makes people susceptable to exploitation. that is all. we’re done here.

I still don’t think you see our point, but whatever.

And since 75% of people are irrational idiots, this should come as no surprise.

ok, no protest from me there. all the more reason to prevent them from being exploited for acting out someone’s evil desires. i really don’t see how my point could be any less than obvious.

Uhm, the fact that the few rational people aren’t going to turn insane upon reading a book? We’re discussing different things now, and it all got extrapolated. I stated that religion can be used to make bad people do bad things which they would have already done without religion. Religion can’t make “good, rational” people do bad things without pressure. Beyond those facts, it’s still about “being used” and not the concept itself driving a person towards it. Lastly, it is not fully meant to force people into doing bad stuff, and certainly not now. I’m not sure how there’s a discussion about this. I don’t think we’ve disagreed, but the things that were discussed simply were looked at too sharply.

Originally posted by OmegaDoom:

Individuals choose to follow beliefs for which authority is based in faith and not logic, and thus their failure of logic and self subservience is to blame, not the fact that they are part of a religion.

but those people exist. i showed you 75% of people would commit an act of evil under the right conditions, just because they were told.

religion makes people susceptable to exploitation. that is all. we’re done here.

I agree with OmegaDoom. The inherent structure of religion with its “obey” “reward in heaven” “Gods will” etc will be more condusive to abuse than the structure of atheism (of which I don’t think there is any).
And just to reiterate, Pol Pot and Stalin weren’t committing atrocities based on an ‘atheistic’ ideology…but Osama Bin Laden was definitely basing his actions on a religious one. George W Bush definitely thought he was commanded by God to invade Iraq. Now if you think this is an attack on religion, you are once again mistaken, it is merely an observation that religion (because of it’s ‘command structure’ with you at the bottom and an all mighty God at top) is structured in a way that it can be used more easily to make people do bad things.

Just on a technical note, if you read any of Pol Pot and Mao’s personal philosophies, they’re inherently anti-religious. In fact, their hatred of political parties that were not their own was based mostly on the idea that religious beliefs are inferior and weak.

Stalin, however, was more than likely agnostic, if not entirely detached from the concept of religion itself. He was, like you say, more about “whatever goes.” However, the point is moreso that his atheism could be viewed by some religious people as the origin of his evil. We could go so far as to say that free thinking makes it easier for people to be misanthropic. It’s no different than your argument that religion makes it easier to make people do bad things. I don’t even disagree, I just find the problem to be people’s stupid gullibility than the concept of religion itself.

And since we’re just repeating ourselves again anyway, religion is just the aspect of that gullibility. It’s a description of people’s incredibly poor logic skills and inability to think for themselves, and isn’t the thing in itself. Lots of people think this way without subscribing to a particular religion. It isn’t exclusive to religion to want someone to have all of the answers for you.

Now if you think this is an attack on religion, you are once again mistaken, it is merely an observation that religion (because of it’s ‘command structure’ with you at the bottom and an all mighty God at top) is structured in a way that it can be used more easily to make people do bad things.

It is still the other way around. It isn’t that “religion makes bad people do bad things”, but “bad people can more easily use religion to justify bad things”. People are the force behind bad things, religion isn’t that force. I suppose, as I said before, it is still semantics, but I’m thinking some of you (perhaps not specifically you) are going to use this as an attack on religion while really it is not the concept you should be looking at. Let’s get back to rape. You’re not going to attack the writer of the dictionary for “inventing” the word rape. It’s not invented. It’s a description of what happens in the world, just like religion. We don’t like rape, or particular parts of religion, but that doesn’t make the words rape and religion inherently evil. It makes the people who commit rape or justify bad things with religion evil.

That’s all to be said, and if you agree with that, then this discussion hasn’t been very useful.

i wasn’t gonna comment anymore, because we’re just repeating ourselves.

but i have no problem with the person that invented the word “religion”. i have a problem with the concept “religion”.

i made that comparison for the difference: (almost) everyone agrees that rape itself is bad; not just someone that (ab)uses it. i suggest the same for religion.

your argument is that there is a right way and a wrong way to use religion. my argument is that religion is structurally wrong for reasons i’ve already explained a dozen times. it inherently inhabits the intellectual underbelly of the gullible, so it inherently sets them up for exploitation.

(there’s a funny parallel that might be drawn to the gun-control debate)

i suggest the same for religion.

Except that far from almost everyone agrees that “religion is bad”.

from the Creation vs Evolution thread:

Argumentum ad populum.

The heck? You were the one using the argument, not I.

Originally posted by Darkruler2005:

The heck? You were the one using the argument, not I.

+1

This whole thread has been nothing but fallacious attacks on religion being met with equally fallacious arguments to show their absurdity, but then you claim fallacy. Religion isn’t a sentient thing, and it’s structure only lends itself to controlling others easily, and isn’t exclusively this feature. Parenting isn’t a sentient thing, and it takes an awful parent to make parenting bad. It takes a coercive person to make people’s faith into a dependency. Rape is literally defined as taking advantage of another person. You cannot say that religion is always this way if it isn’t. Many modern religious people do not listen to any authority figure when it comes to their spiritual beliefs, so that right there entirely debunks your argument.

But then I’m not even sure I know what your argument is. None of us disagree that religion is incredibly effective at providing cognitive dissonance to it’s followers, but cognitive dissonance is a feature of people either wanting to deceive themselves, or others purposefully deceiving them. Religion isn’t where that comes from. People self deceive when it comes to the attractiveness of their wives, the certainty of their political beliefs, and the validity of crystal healing. Magical, self serving thinking is the problem, and religion is just the name for institutions that use this uncertainty to comfort, control, or enrich people and communities.

It’s like you’re saying heights are bad because you can fall. None of us disagree, but that doesn’t mean heights are actively out to make us fall. Religion and heights aren’t gendered concepts, they’re descriptions of things.

Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

-Steven Weinberg

Religion is certainly not the only thing it takes to make good people do evil things. There are many other things. For example ideologies, cultural morals and habits, group dynamics and so on that can influence people to do evil. But one of those influences is certainly religion. Which can make people who otherwise i would consider good do bad things.

As an example i would point to the religious custom/ritual of circumcision which is right now being strongly debated. Personally for me its quite clear that its wrong/evil to physically harm a child without medical necessity. Now since morals are subjective we don´t need to discuss if the act is truly bad or not and its not the important part either way.
The important part is that some of the people i know, that have had the praxis preformed on their children are people that have always been advocates of children’s rights. Quite frankly without the existing cultural/religious praxis they would never have gotten the idea to preform the act in the first place or had the motivation to go through with it. And it was not that they were duped by some evil Masterminds in the background or even pressured by their parents or the community. No it was a so natural part of their culture and religion that they never even questioned the praxis. Only after a court ruling and the political debate that followed, did they notice the conflict between the children rights they had always been advocates of and the religious ritual they had preformed.

Originally posted by Darkruler2005:

The heck? You were the one using the argument, not I.

that’s not what i meant. what i meant is that a concept itself can be considered bad, and suggest the same for religion.