Himuro wrote:As for your response to Unholy Bible, I'm not sure what good you think a society without religion would do. Only 7% of the worlds wars are started due to religion. It would be naive, especially after the 20th century, to think that getting rid of religion would solve anything, especially since that very century showed how powerful and good a force religion is and can be (civil rights movement for instance). Today's social movements are predicated upon a foundation of secularism and yet they treat humanity as nothing more than labels. You're a snowflake if you're a Trump supporter; you're a racist/misogynist/whatever if you're not. In all of this, we have forgotten the Golden Rule and this truly shows what a secular society can achieve: a society where everyone is all about getting theirs and nothing more. I personally find the shallowness of today's society to be endemic to its secularism; religion stands as the one alternative.
The link you posted was an interesting read, thanks.
If I came across as thinking society would be good without religion it was accidental. I'm very bad at expressing my views, cause I rarely communicate them with anyone. I don't actually think its possible in a long term aspect to have no religions in a society, and if it were, wouldn't do much for any sort of greater good. There's a lot of people out there who seem to require a basis for knowing what is "good " and "evil", given a certain psychological temperament, and some people don't. This requirement can come up in someone's life at any time, if something horrible enough happens to them, they've done something that caused horrible things, or maybe not even horrible, but just an experience of a life-changing nature. Those who do require that basis and don't have it suffer greatly and do damage to others and/or themselves in their lives without it. This is why religion is fine, and necessary if we want to help lessen the suffering of great numbers. The people who teach these religions really need to understand it though, and stress the thought and practices involved in finding the source of one's own morality and suffering in the context of their own experiences, and quit telling folks to follow the morality some dude found for himself a million years ago. If people in religion are taught not why/how to live, but how to figure out why/how to live, throw in a some messages of hope and whatnot, it's great. Maybe one day with sufficiently advanced science, there'll be a quick fix to this path through the irrationality of ourselves, but there isn't yet.
Does this make sense?