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Originally posted by Seshmeister
Amen!
You've nicely summed up the main points.
Religion is basically a virus passed on from parent to child.
We've evolved so that as children we are preprogrammed to believe what our parents tell us. This is very important because otherwise offspring would jump off a cliff or eat the poisonous berries or try and pet the sabre tooth tiger. The ones that didn't didn't survive. When a parent passes on the superstitions that they have inherited from their parents this has a strong hold on their children which is hard to shake.
To give an example of the insanity of this my Dad recently said to me 'I insist my grandchildren are brought up as Christians and go to Sunday school.' My Dad only goes to church for weddings and funerals. He doesn't know much about scripture or much about the history of the bible and is a retired scientist. Like so many people I think he see's religion as a comfort blanket and a morality tool. I think he was a little shocked at my 20 minute detailed fuck off rant where I pointed out it does neither.
If you are religious unless you have been indoctrinated by a cult then you have to accept that like 99.99% of religious people your 'beliefs'(where belief is a euphanism for illogical unsubstatiated crazy superstions) are completely based on the accident of your peer group and geography.
Cheers!
Amen!
You've nicely summed up the main points.
Religion is basically a virus passed on from parent to child.
We've evolved so that as children we are preprogrammed to believe what our parents tell us. This is very important because otherwise offspring would jump off a cliff or eat the poisonous berries or try and pet the sabre tooth tiger. The ones that didn't didn't survive. When a parent passes on the superstitions that they have inherited from their parents this has a strong hold on their children which is hard to shake.
To give an example of the insanity of this my Dad recently said to me 'I insist my grandchildren are brought up as Christians and go to Sunday school.' My Dad only goes to church for weddings and funerals. He doesn't know much about scripture or much about the history of the bible and is a retired scientist. Like so many people I think he see's religion as a comfort blanket and a morality tool. I think he was a little shocked at my 20 minute detailed fuck off rant where I pointed out it does neither.
If you are religious unless you have been indoctrinated by a cult then you have to accept that like 99.99% of religious people your 'beliefs'(where belief is a euphanism for illogical unsubstatiated crazy superstions) are completely based on the accident of your peer group and geography.
Cheers!
As for my view, I'm agnostic as I really don't think there's really anyway of knowing for sure. But what I will say is that science doesn't deal in certainties either. I find all of the issues very interesting, and I can't be dogmatic (sorry) either way. I try and keep my mind open.
For me, the worst kind of religion is one which doesn't allow questioning.
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