Death to Religion?

JohnRiver

Right, we all know Religion is a touchy subject. We all have devout family members and friends. And we can all see they don't much like being challenged about their faith...

But! Religion is Evil! ...to use "Evil" in my athiestic, collective morality sense :P I mean it's an idiotic doling out of government, right? Us Irish should see that clearer than most I'd think...? and these people we're questioning and hurting with our questions, well, they're lending numbers to corrupt institutions, right? granting power to the twistedness and evil, right? so even if these people in question aren't contributing directly to the evil twistedness and corruption themselves (you know, the raping of children, stoning of homosexuals, condemning of safe sex, etc., etc.), we still hold the moral high ground in our hurting of them, right? I mean all i'm talking about hurting is deluded feelings :P ...and in the interest of the greater good!

Soooo...Death to Religion?!

By the way, I'm new here; might anyone tell me would it be against the terms of service to try and use this place to incite an unholy war?

Dave!

Cool the jets dude... Demographics are on our side, no need for an unholy war thanks!

JohnRiver

Dave! wrote: »

Cool the jets dude... Demographics are on our side, no need for an unholy war thanks!

what, Ireland is more athiest than catholic?

dlofnep

The intelligent will outbreed the stupid. Evolution wins.

dlofnep

JohnRiver wrote: »

what, Ireland is more athiest than catholic?

Young Ireland is certainly far less religious than the 35+ demographic.

Sarky

Most religions are doing a fine job of tearing themselves apart without any intervention. I'm content to sit back and chuckle at the absurdity of it all while having filthy pre-marital sex, eating meat on Fridays and benefiting from stem cell research.

Dave!

JohnRiver wrote: »

what, Ireland is more athiest than catholic?

No, but my generation is about 5 times less religious my grandparents', and we're making progress in terms of education (Educate Together, Ruairi Quinn...), plus the Churches are struggling to get priests and worshippers, so in another generation or two religion will be all but irrelevant IMO.

lemd

dlofnep wrote: »

The intelligent will outbreed the stupid. Evolution wins.

Don't be so sure!

soterpisc

JohnRiver wrote: »

Right, we all know Religion is a touchy subject. We all have devout family members and friends. And we can all see they don't much like being challenged about their faith...

But! Religion is Evil! ...to use "Evil" in my athiestic, collective morality sense :P I mean it's an idiotic doling out of government, right? Us Irish should see that clearer than most I'd think...? and these people we're questioning and hurting with our questions, well, they're lending numbers to corrupt institutions, right? granting power to the twistedness and evil, right? so even if these people in question aren't contributing directly to the evil twistedness and corruption themselves (you know, the raping of children, stoning of homosexuals, condemning of safe sex, etc., etc.), we still hold the moral high ground in our hurting of them, right? I mean all i'm talking about hurting is deluded feelings :P ...and in the interest of the greater good!

Soooo...Death to Religion?!

By the way, I'm new here; might anyone tell me would it be against the terms of service to try and use this place to incite an unholy war?

Yeah Yeah ... Kill the priests Torch the convents.. Oh Wait they did that already in Spain the mid Thirties.

Goes to show the ignorant posts that make their way to this forum.

Dave!

soterpisc wrote: »

Yeah Yeah ... Kill the priests Torch the convents.. Oh Wait they did that already in Spain the mid Thirties.

Goes to show the ignorant posts that make their way to this forum.

And are badly received?

JohnRiver

Dave! wrote: »

No, but my generation is about 5 times less religious my grandparents', and we're making progress in terms of education (Educate Together, Ruairi Quinn...), plus the Churches are struggling to get priests and worshippers, so in another generation or two religion will be all but irrelevant IMO.

all through materialism, i'd say, rather than logic and reasoning. how many young adults do you think wont baptise their kids in the nexts few years? wont have them make their first confessions, holy communions and that lot? i've thought similar to you, i must say, but i'm not altogether too sure...

i figure we need an unholy war just to be sure to be sure :P

tricky D

lemd wrote: »

Don't be so sure!

He he

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BXRjmyJFzrU

JohnRiver

JohnRiver wrote: »

all through materialism, i'd say, rather than logic and reasoning. how many young adults do you think wont baptise their kids in the nexts few years? wont have them make their first confessions, holy communions and that lot? i've thought similar to you, i must say, but i'm not altogether too sure...

as in to say the fall in religious numbers is through materialism. hardly the advances in education, which i've not really witnessed. the priest makes nearly daily visits to the national school in my village...

JohnRiver

correcting yourself doesn't work too well here, huh?

JohnRiver

Dave! wrote: »

And are badly received?

hey! way to lump me in with him... :P

dlofnep

JohnRiver wrote: »

correcting yourself doesn't work too well here, huh?

You quoted yourself, instead of editing.

Dave!

JohnRiver wrote: »

as in to say the fall in religious numbers is through materialism. hardly the advances in education, which i've not really witnessed. the priest makes nearly daily visits to the national school in my village...

True, but Educate Together is going to be taking over patronage of alot more schools going forward.

It's true that even my generation is probably going to baptise their children for the most part, though the numbers not baptising surely continue to grow. How many will take their kids to Church on Sunday though? Compared with even when I was a kid and was forced to go to Church regularly (my older brothers had to be altar boys).


There's also the whole recent popularity of people like Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, etc., and a bigger platform for anti-religious sentiments to be expressed and debated. That'll help too.


It takes time, but it's petering out... I'm optimistic!

zico10

dlofnep wrote: »

The intelligent will outbreed the stupid. Evolution wins.

Probably not, the intelligent are intelligent enough to use contraception.

Sarky wrote: »

Most religions are doing a fine job of tearing themselves apart without any intervention. I'm content to sit back and chuckle at the absurdity of it all while having filthy pre-marital sex, eating meat on Fridays and benefiting from stem cell research.

Aren't they?

GarIT

I'm 18 and in 6th year and I don't know anyone my age that is a Catholic. We actually joke a good bit about the lack of inteligence and ignorance of people that believe. For me personally its the level of physics were thought that stops me from believeing. Science can prove that hundreds of the things the church says to be lies. So why would I believe the very few things that can't be proven like the existance of god. If somene lies to you why trust them again.

5uspect

Dave! wrote: »

True, but Educate Together is going to be taking over patronage of alot more schools going forward.

After the war on Relgion can we get rid of this phrase?

mikemac

GarIT wrote: »

We actually joke a good bit about the lack of inteligence and ignorance of people that believe.

And yet some atheists wonder why they are perceived as arrogant

JohnRiver

Dave! wrote: »

True, but Educate Together is going to be taking over patronage of alot more schools going forward.

It's true that even my generation is probably going to baptise their children for the most part, though the numbers not baptising surely continue to grow. How many will take their kids to Church on Sunday though? Compared with even when I was a kid and was forced to go to Church regularly (my older brothers had to be altar boys).

It takes time, but it's petering out... I'm optimistic!

i suppose there's room to be optimistic in fairness. though i'd attribute the fall in people going to mass to materialism again :P i mean in the past it was more a past-time than anything... people just went there to meet the neighbours pretty much. now we've better things to be doing and other places to meet the neighbours.

i mean my parents, for example, never go to mass, never brought me to mass, none of us ever read the bible, but they're still religious... hold true to the certain religious values instilled in them. they would, even after catholicism's fall, still consider themselves christians...and i used be devout myself to the little i knew about christianity before i had it crushed for me by logic and reasoning. it's an idea people can run with and can have damaging implications...

i really do think we need an unholy war lol... say, an atheism class introduced into schools or something...

zico10

GarIT wrote: »

I'm 18 and in 6th year and I don't know anyone my age that is a Catholic. We actually joke a good bit about the lack of inteligence and ignorance of people that believe.

mikemac wrote: »

And yet some atheists wonder why they are perceived as arrogant

I think that says more about 18 year olds, than it does about atheists.

Sarky

Religious folks get outraged enough at the thought of people not teaching any religion in schools, they'd be utterly intolerable if the state suddenly switched to teaching kids that they're deluded and wrong. It would be amusing for a while, but ultimately counter-productive.

Baby steps. Keep schools for useful things like mathematics, languages, science and such. Let people figure things like religion out for themselves, once they're old enough to consider an argument without being forced to accept it as truth. That's terrifying enough for plenty of godbotherers.

JohnRiver

Sarky wrote: »

Religious folks get outraged enough at the thought of people not teaching any religion in schools, they'd be utterly intolerable if the state suddenly switched to teaching kids that they're deluded and wrong. It would be amusing for a while, but ultimately counter-productive.

Baby steps. Keep schools for useful things like mathematics, languages, science and such. Let people figure things like religion out for themselves. That's terrifying enough for plenty of godbotherers.

logic and reasoning are valuable tools :P

biko

dlofnep wrote: »

The intelligent will outbreed the stupid. Evolution wins.

Unfortunately with the influx of religious zealots from MENA I think over time we're just changing one religion for another.

MagicMarker

JohnRiver wrote: »

We all have devout family members and friends.

We do? I can't think of a single family member or friend who is devout tbh.

dlofnep

biko wrote: »

Unfortunately with the influx of religious zealots from MENA I think over time we're just changing one religion for another.

MENA?

JohnRiver

MagicMarker wrote: »

We do? I can't think of a single family member or friend who is devout tbh.

well you're just odd you are :P

Turtwig

I've said it before and I'll say it again : Religion is like Hydra chop off its head and two more will grow back.

JohnRiver

Malty_T wrote: »

I've said it before and I'll say it again : Religion is like Hydra chop off its head and two more will grow back.

one can be religious without being spiritual

we could make logic and reasoning the new religion!

Sarky

And that would lead to schisms in mathematics over the precise interpretation of B.O.M.D.A.S, or some other stupidly trivial thing. Do you really want the logic/reason equivalent of starting a new church because you think that eating at a buffet is a sin?

It's really not worth the hassle.

Turtwig

Sarky wrote: »

And that would lead to schisms in mathematics over the precise interpretation of B.O.M.D.A.S, or some other stupidly trivial thing.

It's really not worth the hassle.

I love you!
(I hope if I said i < 3 u you would have nit picked it )

JohnRiver

Sarky wrote: »

And that would lead to schisms in mathematics over the precise interpretation of B.O.M.D.A.S, or some other stupidly trivial thing. Do you really want the logic/reason equivalent of starting a new church because you think that eating at a buffet is a sin?

It's really not worth the hassle.

right, maybe the athiesm class suggestion was a bit ridiculous... but tbh, i meant more along the lines of abolishing religion classes/not teaching kids unjustifiable nonsense and such...

that'd, i'd think, lead to athiesm/agnosticism on its own... lack of belief :P

though, i'd stress evidence as a basis for belief...

JohnRiver

i was just envisioning us as something similar to vulcans with my "make logic and reasoning our religion" comment :P ...for the fun! lol

JohnRiver

i mean i was hardly talking about a bible critique class or something like that...

AhSureTisGrand

Dave! wrote: »

True, but Educate Together is going to be taking over patronage of alot more schools going forward

AFAIK it's the VEC that will be taking over patronage of schools (that's not to say Educate Together won't establish new ones). Can anyone clear this up

philologos

biko wrote: »

Unfortunately with the influx of religious zealots from MENA I think over time we're just changing one religion for another.

Interesting that you say that. Currently I'm living in an area with a minority majority population mainly comprised of Muslims followed by Sikhs and Hindus. Admittedly this would make the area's make up a whole lot less secular than the UK average but I haven't encountered any huge problems thus far.

Turtwig

philologos wrote: »

Interesting that you say that. Currently I'm living in an area with a minority majority population mainly comprised of Muslims followed by Sikhs and Hindus. Admittedly this would make the area's make up a whole lot less secular than the UK average but I haven't encountered any huge problems thus far.

Fyi, I've two muslims friends who are secularists. It might just might make the area a bit more secular for all you know.

philologos

Malty_T wrote: »

Fyi, I've two muslims friends who are secularists. It might just might make the area a bit more secular for all you know.

I don't see that aspect of the area that I live in to be necessarily a bad thing. In some ways it is actually positive in some ways that it isn't as secularised I'd suspect.

It's important to understand that I mean less secularised in this case as meaning that people seem to feel that faith is important to their lives. This isn't true for most people in Britain, although there is an inherent curiosity about peoples beliefs amongst non-believers here that there isn't in Ireland.

Sonofcicero

The Catholic Church is very strong in the education system in Ireland, so most parents (even young 'trendy' parents) will still put their kids through the system so they won't be left out or bullied. This is the hardest part of the nut to crack - there is a need to reach a critical mass of objectors before anything happens. BTW, catholic education is still prozed in the USA and many European countires, so....who knows where this is going?

Sonofcicero

That should read 'prized'. OOPS!

Turtwig

philologos wrote: »

I don't see that aspect of the area that I live in to be necessarily a bad thing. In some ways it is actually positive in some ways that it isn't as secularised I'd suspect.

It's important to understand that I mean less secularised in this case as meaning that people seem to feel that faith is important to their lives.

Right, well then uh you could start using the meaning secularists themselves have for secularism. Your faith can still be an important aspect of your life, that has f**k all to do with secularism.

mikeyboy

The forms of religion that seem to be declining are the more tolerant versions of Catholicism, Anglicanism, Islam etc. while the more radical versions of Christianity and Islam are gathering force. As the more strident version of Atheism.

philologos

Malty_T wrote: »

Right, well then uh you could start using the meaning secularists themselves have for secularism. Your faith can still be an important aspect of your life, that has f**k all to do with secularism.

I mean that the area I live in isn't all that secular in that most people seem to live according to some form of faith but I wouldn't describe the majority as zealots nor would I say that it is wholly detrimental to the society. In some ways it is positive that it isn't.

Edit:
It's important that there are different meanings of the word secular depending on the context. I group it into three personally.

The root defnition of secular:
"Denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis:"

Personal secularism: To say that a person is secular (rather than a secularist) would be to say that they have no religious or spiritual basis.
Societal secularism: To say that a society is secular would be to say that that society has no religious or spiritual basis.
State secularism: To say that the governance of a particular state is secular would be to say that political decision making is not determined by a religious or spiritual basis.

Secularists argue for the latter, sometimes the second also. Many Christians would support the third, but would not support the first or the second. The same would be true of many adherents of other faiths. I'd fall into the view of only advocating the third.

JohnRiver

philologos wrote: »

I mean that the area I live in isn't all that secular in that most people seem to live according to some form of faith but I wouldn't describe the majority as zealots nor would I say that it is wholly detrimental to the society. In some ways it is positive that it isn't.

Edit:
It's important that there are different meanings of the word secular depending on the context. I group it into three personally.

The root defnition of secular:
"Denoting attitudes, activities, or other things that have no religious or spiritual basis:"

Personal secularism: To say that a person is secular (rather than a secularist) would be to say that they have no religious or spiritual basis.
Societal secularism: To say that a society is secular would be to say that that society has no religious or spiritual basis.
State secularism: To say that the governance of a particular state is secular would be to say that political decision making is not determined by a religious or spiritual basis.

Secularists argue for the latter, sometimes the second also. Many Christians would support the third, but would not support the first or the second. The same would be true of many adherents of other faiths. I'd fall into the view of only advocating the third.

but the state is society's baby?

and...well, apart from believing in what the religion says, one would think its whole point was government. religious texts are pretty preachy... so...

i'd personally advocate all three. think of the poor children who'd be indoctrinated! indoctrinated to dismiss Newton's law of Gravity to believe that the earth is at the center of the universe... you can't go around dismissing gravity...

also this:http://www.cosmonline.co.uk/blog/2011/09/05/putting-earth-back-its-place

i mean, what's with these people? they're bad for society...

philologos

JohnRiver wrote: »

but the state is society's baby?

The State is what is responsible for securing the fundamental liberties and well-being of all people.

I'm personally not in favour of societal or personal secularism because I believe that a living commitment to Jesus Christ is beneficial both to individuals and society at large.

JohnRiver

philologos wrote: »

The State is what is responsible for securing the fundamental liberties and well-being of all people.

I'm personally not in favour of societal or personal secularism because I believe that a living commitment to Jesus Christ is beneficial both to individuals and society at large.

tell that to all the kids who were raped. are you christian?

having checked, yes it seems you are christian. figures...

Dades

JohnRiver wrote: »

tell that to all the kids who were raped. are you christian?

having checked, yes it seems you are christian. figures...

Do not turn this kinda pointless thread (there's already two threads on education on the go) into something personal.

The A&A forum doesn't have an old book but it has rules.

philologos

JohnRiver wrote: »

tell that to all the kids who were raped. are you christian?

having checked, yes it seems you are christian. figures...

What does child abuse have to do with my Christian faith exactly?*

* Unless you are making the typical mistake of assuming that all Christianity is Roman Catholicism.

JohnRiver

Dades wrote: »

Do not turn this kinda pointless thread (there's already two threads on education on the go) into something personal.

The A&A forum doesn't have an old book but it has rules.

well calling my thread pointless was kinda personal :P but i do offer my humble apologies to our good sir philologos...i should've perhaps just asked him to elaborate rather than going the road i did. so, yeah, my apologies...