This is a paper I wrote for my World Religions class...the paper to discuss our personal beliefs abotu religion.
This is what I wrote. Flame nicely.
I decided to take the World Religion class in order to get a deeper understanding of multiple religions; this understanding is important to studying both of my majors- anthropology and history. I find the study of religion interesting, the strength of faith in man, the ways men manipulate religion for their own use, the origins of belief, etc.
My personal thoughts on religion may be skewed by multiple run-ins with less than ideal religious authority figures; overbearing evangelicals, half-psychotic street preachers, and the stereotypical Southern Baptists, who kicked me out of more than one AWANA meeting. I believe religion itself is innocuous; it is how people manipulate religion that causes its less than perfect historical record and attach stigmata.
Religion satisfies a need for human curiousity. Who does not want an answer to what is to come in the “final frontier”- death? Who is not curious as to what happens to a soul or how the universe came to be? Religion, whether it is a belief in the ancient race of the Annunaki or Zoroastrianism or Islam, satisfies these otherwise insatiable questions.
All religions share similar tenets; love your god, love your parents, love your fellow man. It is these similar tenets that lead me to believe that all modern religions evolved from one, and followers borrowed aspects of other religions as they saw fit. For example, ideas of heaven and hell appear in both Christianity and Zoroastrianism. While, I believe all religions may have evolved from one, or a few, similar belief systems, I also believe many of the religions have been perverted to serve a people. Religion has caused perhaps the largest number of deaths, through wars and other equally un-religious things. (The Crusades, slavery, the Holocaust, the Wars of Religion, Micah the Preacher at UCF.)
Today, I think religion is greatly perverted to serve the needs of those in charge. In the democratic U.S elections, people vote on “religious” issues such as abortion, gay rights and evolution rather than poverty, social security or healthcare. Also, it has been suggested by every major media corporation that an atheist could never be elected as president. While I believe that electing a president based on his beliefs of a personal decision, more often than not, is the sole reason to be elected.
Personally, I do not follow any specific religious beliefs. I could be considered an agnostic, or even a Deist. I believe that any religious system has merit, or it would most likely not have been believable in the first place. Could the Annunaki have created man? Sure. Could the flood really have happened? Possibly, after all a worldly flood, at the time could have been the flood of Modern Day Iraq. Could evolution be the be-all-end-all answer to our present state of humanity? Why not? Could we go to heaven? Be reincarnated? Or be tormented because we do not believe a man died to pay for our sins? Absolutely. Each system of religion has merit, and I do not believe it is our place to say that our religion is the “ONE, TRUE AND ONLY WAY TO GOD OR SO SHALL YOU BURN IN HELL.” Then again, I also believe ideas of heaven and hell are individual as well.
Overall, I believe religion is a very personal thing, one’s communication and belief in a god should be private, it should not be fodder for the next roundtable debate. I do think that the merits and demerits of any religion should be openly discussed from an objective point of view, at least, as objectively as possible. I am looking forward to these discussions this semester.
I have heard this sentiment expressed often. But I have never heard it really justified. You attempt to justify it by telling us the good purpose of religion:
The problem here is that it "satisfies" the curiosity with mythical stories that have no bearing in fact. No one knows what happens after death simply because no dead person has ever told us what it is like to be dead.
We have no reliable information that a "soul" even exissts.
We have a lot of reliable information on how the universe came to be. Unfortunately ALL of that infomation contradicts every religious version of how it came to be.
For me religion offers absolutely NO satisfaction on any of those questions, but scientific reasoning does. When we die, we are dead and thst is it. That means what we do here on earth is MORE important. There is no soul. Our thoughts and who we are arise from the workings of the brain. And everything we do affects the workings of the brain, therefore it is best to do things that make the brain work better. Those are pragmatic and satisfying answers. Religion is gobbledygook.
The ambiguities inherent in religions certainly make it such that if one wanted to, a case AGAINST those tenets could be made. For instance, when God instructs Moses to tell the Israelites to kill every Midianite except for virgin females who are to be made slaves, a case could be made against "love of your fellow man".
When Jesus says:
If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own life—he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)
or
Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn
" 'a man against his father,
a daughter against her mother,
a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law -
a man's enemies will be the members of his own household (Matthew 10:34-36)
The claim to love your parents becomes somewhat suspect as well.
But let's suppose that you are correct and these "good" things are basic tenets of religion, why did you not include the "bad" things as basic tenets. You seem to think of them as some type of manipulations by people with ulterior motives.
But it REALLY does say in the New Testament that one MUST believe in Jesus Christ to go to heaven and if you don't you risk eternity in the fires of hell. The Qur'an REALLY does say that non-believers should be killed.
Sure, it says other things as well, but since when is ambiguity a strength? Why is being a cafeteria Christian or Muslim -- picking only those verses one likes as being meaningful -- any less of a manipulation of religion for ones own purposes than is going by a strict interpretation of the text?
To me you seem to be to religion in general, one of the things that drives me crazy with "moderate" Christians do with God. Everything good that happens is [due to religion being good/God's handiwork]; everything bad is [due to religion be manipulated for ulterior purposes/bad luck or the devil]. You can't have it both ways. If you are going to attribute credit then you need to be willing to attribute blame as well.
The problem I see with "moderate" religionists is that they provide respectability for the extremists to operate without proper scrutiny. Let's use you, an avowed agonstic/deist, as an example. You would have to be considered as part of the far liberal wing of religionists. Yet, you say:
Look what you are doing here. You are saying that it is equally reasonable to believe that the Anunnaki (note the spelling difference for future papers in your class;=)) created mankind, there was a worldwide flood, life-after-death, reincarnation, and evolution. It is NOT. Only one of those things has any reliable evidence going for it at all. Most of them are completely ruled out.
Ea (aka Enki and one of the principle two Anunnaki) did not kill Kingu to get his blood to make humans. Humans evolved from ape-like ancestors. There is no reasonable doubt of this. Given credence to Anunnaki myths gives irrational thought an umberella of respectablility.
There was no global flood. There is no reasonable doubt to this. Furthermore, no local flood, no matter how large would explain things that global flood myths are designed to explain. Giving credence to them again gives irrational thought a protective umberella of respectability.
There is no evidence of lfe after death. There is no evidence of reincarnation. In fact, I believe the evidence clearly points away from such conclusions. Giving equal credence to things which have no evidence to things that have abundant evidence does a disservice to critical thinking. And critical thinking skills are going to be needed if we are to face the challenges ahead of us in the highly technological world we live in today.
It is just this type of umberella of respectability that we give to religious beliefs in general that allow extremist positions to flourish. If we were encouraged to examine the Qur'an critically and point out that it says they are demons who do things that make no sense from our perspective given what we know today, then perhaps people would have less faith in it when it advocates killing infidels.
Perhaps if we did not accord religion such an umberella of respectability then religious arguments forbidding the distribution of condoms in Africa to prevent the spread of AIDS would not have been so successful and thousands (perhaps millions) of lives would have been saved.
So in conclusion ... No, I disagree with your assessment that "religion itself is innocuous". I think it at best promotes irrational thought which has real world consequences for the worse.
Cheers,
Darwin's Beagle
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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
Let me start by saying I'm not trying to disprove you, I just want a little bit of clarification :-)
There is no evidence of lfe [sic] after death. There is no evidence of reincarnation. In fact, I believe the evidence clearly points away from such conclusions.
You're right in that there is no evidence to say that there is life after death or reincarnation or whatever. But how does the evidence point away from those ideas? I mean, if you are talking about people not remembering their past lives, you can look at the phenoms of deja vu or remembering things you could never have experienced. Or even dreams. After all, our entire existence is subjective... it's rather difficult to eliminate something as a possibility when it's not yet been studied how these things occur (though there was an article up this morning about out of body experiences). And life after death? As you said, we don't know anyone that has come back from the dead to say one way or the other. It might not be reasonable for you to believe in these, but I don't see how the evidence points away from those conclusions. At least at this time.
~C
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(1) Life after death
The first question to ask is, "What is it exactly that lives after we die?" The consensus response is, "the soul". But what is the soul? There I do not seem to be able to get those who argue for life after death to come to a consensus opinion. I am forced to guess what they mean. The best I can do is that the soul is a mind-like property that is not associated with the body.
I can see no difference between the soul and the Cartesian mind. So the evidence that I see as pointing away from a soul (and hence, life after death) is the same evidence that I see as arguing against the existence of a non-material mind.
The evidence is that if you alter the brain, you alter the mind.
(a) Physical injuries to the brain will cause personality changes. These injuries include head trauma and stroke.
(b) Drugs that alter brain function alter the personality. Examples include alcohol, cocaine, marijuana, LSD etc. This alteration of personality can be reversible if the drug is withdrawn and the behavior hasn't become chronic.
(c) Physiological processes that alter brain function alter the personality. Examples include sleep deprivation and metabolic acidosis.
(d) Disease processes that produce abnormal brain function cause abnormal personalities. Examples include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, etc. The symptoms disappear when drugs are administered that act at known brain sites and DO restore normal brain function such as dopamine antagonists used to treat schizophrenia.
To me these data strongly suggest that there is no non-material mind. If there is no non-material mind then there is likely to be no soul. If there is no soul then there is no life after death.
(2) Reincarnation
Reincarnation involves living multiple lives. What is the proposed mechanism behind it? Most people argue that it is the same soul inhabiting sequential bodies. Therefore the evidence that I presented above concerning the lack of a soul also qualify as evidence against reincarnation.
The rest of the evidence involves the fact that once one looks closely at phenomenon such as Near Death Experiences (NDE's), Deja vu (DV), and past-life regression (PLR) the evidence for them seems to evaporate. There is an NDE researcher who is also an emergency room technician. He has an index card placed above an OR table such that it is only readable from above the person's body. No one yet who has experienced an NDE has reported seeing the card much less reading what is written on it. Most NDE's have that have been looked at closely have false memories to them. No NDE has ever come up with information that has been shown to conclusively come from a time in which the patient's EEG's were flatlined.
DV studies have not shown any information to come from the future. It is only a feeling that the person has been in that situation before, but we seldom get into truly novel situations. Everything bears a resemblance to something in our past. Our brain is good at finding patterns ... that was an evolutionary adaptive trait. So the more parsimonious explanation for DV experiences is similarity to past experiences.
PLR studies that actually look for historical evidence of the person's past-life existence either find a person the subject should have known about, or no one at all.
So that is why I think the evidence points away from such conclusions.
Cheers,
Darwin's Beagle
To me these data point to there being no non-material mind
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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France
it give people something to believe, whether real or mythical.
I held back some of my opinons of this paper because it is for a class. I also left out the part about mulitple editings and translations of religious literature.
But whatever.
It's why its called MY thoughts on religion.
Hail The PitGoddess!
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/the-pitgoddess