Help Destroy God

I still don't think i've talked anything crazy. If admitting that belief in god or spirituality is crazy, then you must feel saner then most of the world. if so, congrats to you. It must be nice to feel like you can solve thousands of years of intolerance just like that.

I don't have an answer for everyone who believes in god, i can only speak for myself. And i'm all for pulling people here to challenge my thoughts and opinions, but i do get defensive when they do it in a childish and biggoted tone, provide no facts, call me names, assume they know what i'm about., etc.

My point in posting in this thread? I simply wanted to point out that not all anarchists, or since you obviously have me labelled as not being anarchist worthy, not all those who want to work towards destroying the government and work towards living their own lives their own way are athiest, and I think saying all those who believe in god should be beheaded was plain ignorance.

Now I'd like to know why you think it is ok to be a biggot towards those who believe in God, or spirituality. And I want to know how it hurts you.

You want to exclude me from the struggle? Ok, but know my body can take a bullet and I can die just as well as you or anyone else.

 

u need 2 get a sense of humour yo, ya know like the crusades and shit

 

To try to destroy the belief in god and push pure science on others would be pure fascism. What needs to be destroyed is the organized religions of the state, which pushes upon people their idea of "moral right and wrong," which is absolutely non-existent, and used only as a tool to keep people subservient to the laws of the system.
Everyone should have their own personal morals and values, and someone's individual belief that a god, whichever it may be, created the universe should be left untouched. But pushing on people that there is no god is basically trying to control what they personally believe.

Organized Religion = bad
Individual Beliefs = good

 

Anxiety you have to realize what religion has done to the people of this world, millions upon millions dead in the name of some god or another. Some Anarchists carry this knowledge like a poison...myself included. However I am not an intolerant person, my grandmother was an extreme catholic whom I loved dearly, and generally I would humor her because of love. However, fascism is the marriage of church and state, regardless if its Islam, Judeo-Christian, Bhuddist, Tao, or any other. I think some of the comments on here where made in fun and some not, some just childish, but you can't be suprised that most Anarchists will not accept the belief in any God.

 

i was raised jehovahs witness
these women and men are a step up from mormans but thats not saying much.
I recommend this religion if you dont want to believe in god at all!
they sure helped me become a non believer.
with this said i must regress, i personally believe there is something more to life.
I just judge this on personal experience, though, as opposed to it being read in a book.
and hey, i dont know all the answers
I dont think it's necessarily the belief in a deity (or many) is the problem.
the dogma is. acting infallible when you dont got legit proof.
sadly they often hold hands and go to the park together.
gods and dogma's.

 

I completely agree with this, and am all for seperation of church and state.

Yes, but the same can be said about the creation of weapons, quests for power, many other things in which spirituality did not play a part. And i'm not trying to defend religion, i see religion and spirituality as 2 completely different things.

I'm not surprised, and It's not like i am trying to convert anyone or anything. All that I find suprising is how vile their attitudes towards those who believe are. And comments like "all who believe in god should die" and stuff. I don't find the idea of genocide humorous.

All in all, i am only defending my right to believe in whatever I want, if it is not harmful to others. I don't care if people believe in god or not, it all comes down to my right to believe. people can claim and believe the world is flat, good for them as long as they aren't out to grab power or hurt anyone, let them think what they want.

 

Thank you, that is all i have been trying to say.

 

Simply believing in a devine creator may not be sufficient criteria for classifying or diagnosing insanity, but it is fundamentally irrational. I would also say that it's nearly incontrovertible that the extent of ones' religious belief has an inverse relationship with the ability to make reasoned judgements. The most extreme, devout religious believers are, in fact, suffering from a type of mental disorder.

For the record, I did inquire as to the specific nature of your professed belief without resorting to hyperbole or personal attacks.

Well, that's two seperate questions, but the answers are fundamentally linked. Here goes...
I certainly cannot be accused of bigotry, and, I would extend that to most of your detractors, however poorly they may articulate themselves. Bigotry is in irrational prejudice without reason. I won't presume to speak for anyone else, but, to quote the comedian, Bill Maher, "I'm not pre-judging, I'm judging." Religion has had an overwhelmingly destructive impact, inspiring some of the greatest atrocities in human history. Today it provides the impetus for young men in the Middle East to strap bombs to themselves or set women on fire in "honor killings", even in the United States, it inspires the bombing of abortion clinics, and prevents homosexuals from having equal rights. So, religious belief is not really being misrepresented or mischaracterized. While we're on the subject, consider the fact that is presently impossible for an admitted atheist to be elected to congress, although I have no doubt that there are several atheist representatives. One can speak of all the good things done by people of faith, but this in part suggests that their belief was the source of their generosity or humanity, while it is abundantly clear that empathy and sympathy are in no way intrinsically bound to the belief in a supernatural creator. This is evidenced by the multitude of massacres perpetrated in the name of particular faiths, the perpetrators of the Inquisition or Islamic Jihad read their respective religious texts very carefully, I assure you.

I think I've already outlined a lot of the harm done in civilization by religion, however I want to back away from the more obvious examples, and kind of go back to where I started. One of the biggest dangers of religion is not the violence or hatred it inspires, but it's deleterious effect on people's ability to function rationally. For one small example, because of religion more than half of the population modern United States believe that Satan is a real entity who plots to do us harm. Today, in 2010. That such bronze age absurdities could exert such a powerful influence in the age of genetic sequencing and (especially) nuclear weapons is little short of horrifying. As I said, a person's capacity for rational thought decreases inversely with their degree of religious belief. These people to varying degrees are not susceptible to reason, and that is dangerous. You can point to a few isolated examples, but most truly educated people today would be qualified as barely religious. There are examples, such as Thomas Aquinas, however for all his brilliant thinking he never questioned very basic core assumptions about the universe which were completely unfounded, and, incidentally, sanctioned the murder of heretics. In summation, religion is most dangerous fundamentally because it distorts people's thinking and damages their capacity for rational thought.

 

NGNM85, that was a well thought out response, but i have to say once again, there is a huge difference between religion and spirituality, and I am not defending religion. And again, yes religion has cause much chaos and disharmony, but so has lots of other factors out there.

Maybe i should ask this, not specifcly to you, to whoever wants to answer it, if anarachists were to get control and create the ideal anarcho society, what would you do with people who believed in god, spirituality, or even religion? Allow them to live among you? exile them? imprison them? Exterminate them?

 

"Spirituality" is a really dubious and slippery word. I think as an atheist that I can have experiences that I might define as spiritual, but in that case it's more of a metaphor. Anything to do with a supreme being, an underlying force, or that consciousness exists in something other than a bio-electrical process is essentially religion under a different name.

You have the right to believe it,and to express that, but that right is not yours alone. Unfortunately, in most of society religion exists in a neatly constructed buffer zone where it cannot be subject to critical analysis, for very obvious reasons. You can believe in Scientology, or sasquatch, or that Elvis is still alive. The question is should you believe in these things, and even if you decide to, the rest of us shouldn't be obligated to accept it. If you've never heard an atheist say this; I cannot definitively prove 100% there is no god. (Or whatever you want to call it.) However, that doesn't make claims to the contrary any more credible. All scriptures and mythologies are so obviously false I won't even bother refuting them.
Presently, we now understand biology and paleontology and so forth to trace back human history, and back before, to neanderthals, dinosaurs, all stemming from single-celled organisms. This is all a matter of incontrovertible fact and largely understood. In fact, Craig Venter, Genome Project scientists and twice appointed Time Magazine's 100 most Influential Person in thw=e world is very close to constructing a single-celled organism. Many scientists expect this feat, which would be one of the greatest scientific acheivements in history, to be completed soon, if not by Venter, than by one of his competitors. So, even that "mystery" will be conquered.
We have a pretty good picture of the formation of the earth, our solar system, the entire cosmos, up until the big bang. So the only question is; what started it all? Although, some scientists suggest data implies that we are just one of a multitude of universes.
This is where we encounter the argument from existence, which is a complete fallacy. Basically the idea that there must be a god because this big complex universe exists. This is obviously bad judgment. To simply say a magical omnipotent being created the universe simply because we don't know entirely how it happened is unsound. Moreover, there are millions of examples, of complex, awe-inspiring phenomena that occur through entirely naturalistic processes. I already mentioned the evolution of life on earth, and the formation of planets, you could consider the formation of a black hole. These are truly awesome things, but none are inexplicable.

 

This question leads me to think we might need a definition of spirituality here... Is it being part of a religion? Believeing in god? Believeing in ghosts? Believeing in reincarnation? Believeing there will be summer again after the winter? Believeing one will wake up the next morning? Since spirituality as such doesn't seem ok with everyone here (now i'm not talking about religion) can someone then please draw a very clear line for what is ok and what is not?

 

yes spiritual is subjective but organised religion i deny for the face its shows is one of an adversary to peace, it is a harbringer of divide and conquer which binds us all, chur germs.

 

That i agree with.

 

I'm glad you've equated yourself with the flat-earthers. I'd certainly not want flat earthers claiming allegiance to anarchist politics, and definitely not in public! Belief in a ethereal higher power is on the same level, and deserves the same response from rational people. I'm not gonna hurt you, but I'm not going to listen to you either (I'm not a therapist) and I won't accept your claim to my ideals.

And for your information, you can't call someone a bigot just because they disagree with you. Bigotry is based on opinion and prejudice, not fact and reason, and is as irrational as spirituality.

NGNM85 puts things more eloquently than I've got the patience for, but I'm just a crabby old punk who's seen enough of this sort of nonsense elsewhere to get a bit lairy when I come across it in my politics.

 

"It is easy to prove to yourself that God is imaginary. The evidence is all around you. Here are 50 simple proofs:"
http://godisimaginary.com/

 

Always an emotive subject ...

I was intrigued by the title of this thread which presumes that God was at one time alive, so that we could then destroy him....



If someone has a belief system then what they actually do is disempower themselves by attributing phenomena to higher powers, rather than spark their own curiosity to investigate and discover the world around them. There are not always immediate answers but scrutiny is how you reslove mysteries. Belief systems are synonomous with giving up and throwing in the towel and is the attitude of a mind defeated.

While organised religion is the cornerpiece of everything that is wrong in this world it must also be said that those who harbour notions of belief and faith in the supernatural are the people that will perpetuate it. E O Wilson in "On Human Nature" suggests that from a Social-Darwinian perspective religion was a necessary step in our evolution and actually helped to preserve our species by creating a social construct, albeit one based on a crock of lies. But we have to be careful. People used to think that other people were possessed by demons, when in fact they were probably in the grip of a strong virus like influenza. From their perspective they were correct (they expressed as they perceived) but from our perspective they seem backward. It was scinece and scrutiny of course that played out these myths. This process simply needs to be continued.

I think we have to realise that what is transpiring now is that religion and faith systems no longer serve a purpose, except of course to keep our collective minds trapped in antiquity and ignorance and that we need to advance beyond them.

Someone raised the question of what would happen in an anarchist society to people who harboured faith. One can only make a relative assumption. In Spain in 1936-39 churches were looted and religious symbolism destroyed. Many members of the clergy were shot dead and the practice largely driven underground. I've partially answered this above as well. From the anarchist perspective ANY system of faith, whether organised or personal, creates an internal hierarchy and is thus far removed from what anarchism is (the destruction of hierarchy). Just whose ideas are those in your head? I guess keep it yourself if you want to keep duping yourself. Those who continue to present ideas of faith, whether organised or personal, continue to maintain pseudo-philosophies and all the inherent danger that comes when such notions become popular.

When a belief system becomes popular it automatically excludes all and everyone who is not part of that belief system, and creates the potential for mass genocide and destruction.

Finally a favourite quote:

"If god is so powerful can he create a stone which is so heavy that even he cannot lift it?"

 

this is all an opinion, not a fact

 

I found this extremely amusing.

Agreed thus far.

Again agreed thus far.

That (obviously) holds a strong implication towards genocide to prevent genocide which is blatantly absurd, i strongly agree with you, but surely those who are religious must have their own place in the world, though i have little to input on this as i still have some thinking to do on the matter i leave you with this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_T ... o_Achilles hopefully i will be able to use it in a later example if you yourself cannot.

Just putting this out here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omnipotence_paradox

EDIT: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradox_of_tolerance) as i have always thought that punks (and anarchists) were a group that accepted diversity (as they themselves are diverse in thought) i have to ask would an anarchist society be pluralist? if so than this link is as relevant as i thought, and reinforces my thoughts of religions right to exist, if not then why should it not be pluralist?

 

Double post... ignore .... unless you feel a need to comment on it

 

I always preferred this one, "can god create a being more powerful than himself?"