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God is not responsible (Read 10900 times)
freediver
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God is not responsible
Jun 7th, 2007 at 12:52pm
 
http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/yoursay/index.php/theaustralian/comments/god_is_not_responsible/

WE live in curious, irritating times. We are oppressed by superstition and absurd ideologies. We must understand at the root of much that is wrong with the world is a single, common, insidious factor: religion. At least according to public atheists and anti-theists, a remarkable number of whom have devoted large amounts of air time and ink lately to bashing Christians in particular and religious believers in general (<em>writes John Heard</em>).

Militant atheists are right, then, to see religious believers in or behind many of the great struggles of our time. They are wrong, however, to then conclude that humankind must therefore scrap religion.

Examples of bad behaviour perpetrated by religious believers simply don’t tell us anything definitive about religions themselves and certainly nothing necessarily negative about the gods they posit.

This shows the central claim of many of the recent crop of atheistic books relies on a belief less tenable than the relatively well-documented resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and a hypothesis that wouldn’t get past a first-year science student. For if the atheist authors bothered to investigate anything other than the most apparently bizarre topics of religious interest, they’d discover that only a belief that God directly controls the actions of believers - in other words, the kind of determinism that Christians and others long ago rejected - would make God somehow culpable for the violent actions of his followers.

Similarly, only scientific proof that a man's religious affiliation predicts his behaviour, a hypothesis long ago rejected by psychologists, would make religion an obviously poisonous thing.

Rather, those tragedies, these examples of war and violence seem to favour an interpretation more common to the great Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Judaism and Islam): namely that we live in a degraded reality and that man, left to his own devices, is a fairly despicable creature.

In the absence of a divinely endorsed militia, the most obvious explanation for war and chaos is that humans take up arms and nations of humans continually declare war, and for many reasons. Sometimes we use religious claims to justify our actions, but these are most certainly human reasons, human interpretations of religious claims and human actions.
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AusNat
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #1 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 1:18pm
 
Quote:
WE live in curious, irritating times. We are oppressed by superstition and absurd ideologies. We must understand at the root of much that is wrong with the world is a single, common, insidious factor: religion.


YES!

Quote:
At least according to public atheists and anti-theists, a remarkable number of whom have devoted large amounts of air time and ink lately to bashing Christians in particular and religious believers in general


Muslims and jews more than christians.


Quote:
Militant atheists are right


Yes we are Grin

Quote:
see religious believers in or behind many of the great struggles of our time.


Its historical fact.

Quote:
They are wrong, however, to then conclude that humankind must therefore scrap religion.


Absurd statement.

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than the relatively well-documented resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth


People do NOT rise from the dead.

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only a belief that God directly controls the actions of believers -


That is what they claim.


Quote:
man, left to his own devices, is a fairly despicable creature.


That is true anyway- why fight it.

Quote:
In the absence of a divinely endorsed militia, the most obvious explanation for war and chaos is that humans take up arms and nations of humans continually declare war, and for many reasons.


Yeah, against opposing ideals and for land.



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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #2 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 1:46pm
 
freediver wrote on Jun 7th, 2007 at 12:52pm:
We must understand at the root of much that is wrong with the world is a single, common, insidious factor: religion. At least according to public atheists and anti-theists, a remarkable number of whom have devoted large amounts of air time and ink lately to bashing Christians in particular and religious believers in general.


not always true, people tend to blame religion for all the wars, but if u look at the last century the two biggest wars - WW1 & WW2 were not religious ones.

it's actually quite funny, South Park once made an episode about this issue, where it was set in the future when all religions were destroyed. In it's place were different athiest groups fighting against one another to ensure that their version of athiesm reins supreme - it was a very clever swipe at those athiests who think they are better than everyone else.

Grin Grin Grin Grin Grin
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freediver
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #3 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 1:52pm
 
Ah yes, the United Athiests League VS the League of United Atheists. And the AAA beavers.  Grin
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #4 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 1:54pm
 
I saw that too Grin
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #5 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 1:56pm
 
Good, so we can agree that it's not always religion that is the source of the world's problems.
if everyone tossed religion aside, then athiests would still muck it up.
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #6 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 1:57pm
 
Thats because we are MAN.
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #7 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:03pm
 
Ausnat wrote on Jun 7th, 2007 at 1:57pm:
Thats because we are MAN.


Exactly, we're humans and humans are flawed as no one is perfect.
So religion isn't to blame.
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #8 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:11pm
 
Quote:
Exactly, we're humans and humans are flawed as no one is perfect.
So religion isn't to blame.


I think we'd be fighting less wars if there were limited religion.
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #9 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:12pm
 
Ausnat wrote on Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:11pm:
Quote:
Exactly, we're humans and humans are flawed as no one is perfect.
So religion isn't to blame.


I think we'd be fighting less wars if there were limited religion.


so the occassional WW1 or WW2 is okay then?
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #10 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:14pm
 
Nationalism causes more wars than religion.
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #11 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:48pm
 
skeptic wrote on Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:12pm:
Ausnat wrote on Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:11pm:
Quote:
Exactly, we're humans and humans are flawed as no one is perfect.
So religion isn't to blame.


I think we'd be fighting less wars if there were limited religion.


so the occassional WW1 or WW2 is okay then?


Its a natural occourance. WW2 would have never happened if the conclusion of WW1 was handled properly. The average major war happens about every 100 years. The previous major war to that were the Napoleonic wars from 1807 to 1815.
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #12 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:48pm
 
freediver wrote on Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:14pm:
Nationalism causes more wars than religion.


No Nationalism causes less.
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freediver
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #13 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:56pm
 
In high school history we were taught about the significant contribution that nationalism made to the initiation of both world wars. Religion never got a mention, nor should it have. I doubt Napolean was fighting for religious beliefs either. Lebensraum was not a religious belief, it was a belief that the interests of the German people were more important than those of their neighbours.
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Re: God is not responsible
Reply #14 - Jun 7th, 2007 at 3:05pm
 
freediver wrote on Jun 7th, 2007 at 2:56pm:
In high school history we were taught about the significant contribution that nationalism made to the initiation of both world wars. Religion never got a mention, nor should it have. I doubt Napolean was fighting for religious beliefs either. Lebensraum was not a religious belief, it was a belief that the interests of the German people were more important than those of their neighbours.


Thats correct Freediver. 3 wars of Nationalism over 130 years.

How many religious wars have been fought in the same time period FD? Cheesy
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