Do you like religion?

[Hillonearth]

8 hours ago, DA Baracus said:

So not 100% then. Ergo I am indeed the aforementioned heir to the throne of Asgard.

Some bad news for you - you're scheduled to die at Ragnarok along with your da, so no throne in prospect.

Post apocalypse, the ones that run the place are Vidar and Vali, essentially in a co-managers' job.

[Jacksgranda]

10 hours ago, stuartsmfc said:

Are you 100% sure that all religion is false? Bit of a bold statement, the best minds that have ever lived can't prove or disprove God/religion...yet P&B seem to have it all figured out.

P&B has everything figured out - Brexit, Scottish Independence, Northern Ireland, sectarianism, America's gun culture, British imperlialism, bad driving manners, the future of the juniors - the list is endless.

[sugna]

11 hours ago, stuartsmfc said:

Are you 100% sure that all religion is false?

That's a reasonable question:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

It's interesting that objections raised by philosophers on that page, to the form of the argument, are all examples of special pleading. You'd have to presume they're aware of that, but it's almost as though they are saying "that analogy doesn't apply because it would lead to a conclusion that I don't like." Maybe there's too much coin in that old philosophy game for them to cede one of the main seams.

But in principle you're correct: apart from the fact that billions of teapots have been observed, and no gods have, an orbiting teapot isn't all that much more likely than an unspecified supernatural being of some sort. The margin of this Internet is too narrow to contain a suitable estimate of non-supernatural probability, given our (non-) observations to date, with enough 9s after the decimal point; so 100% does a pragmatic job.

[DA Baracus]

1 hour ago, Hillonearth said:

Some bad news for you - you're scheduled to die at Ragnarok along with your da, so no throne in prospect.

Post apocalypse, the ones that run the place are Vidar and Vali, essentially in a co-managers' job.

Ragnarok is a while away yet, and old Borrson is getting on a bit. Plenty of time for him to fire off to Valhalla and for me to take up the throne.

[milton75]

On 10/26/2018 at 09:08, Herman Hessian said:

absolutely; religion was all about governance through fear; successive regimes the world over, throughout history, have co-opted existing belief systems (or come up with new ones)  to convince their subjects that all manner of shit would happen to them  in the afterlife if they didn't behave;  if they didn't agree, all manner of shit happened to them in real time.

the psychology of religion - the need to have faith in something - is clearly an inherent human trait; it's been manipulated, very cleverly, to install people in positions of power which they have maintained by way of fear and intimidation with all manner of invidious threats on the one hand set against utterly unquantifiable "benefits" that simply never have to be demonstrated in real terms; as such, it's fucking evil.

for the most part, it would seem that we have moved on from that stage to a certain extent, but it's still used to exercise control over vast swathes of the human race to the benefit of small(ish) cadres of people who benefit massively from maintaining the status quo (leave it)

on a more individual level - there's a world of difference between faith and belief; by all mains, have whatever faith in whatever fantasies you care to nail your colours to, if it makes you feel better; when you start to believe that whatever shit it is you hang on to is actually true, then it becomes dangerous, because it means you reckon i'm wrong for not thinking the same

all in all, it's a thumbs down from me; did not like, would not use again

I disagree with the bolded bit. I don't think someone can have true faith in something without thinking it's true. If they don't really believe it's true then I'd posit that their faith has been tested and found wanting.

On 10/26/2018 at 15:28, Hillonearth said:

Last year I went to the funeral of an old band member from way back. He was of Italian descent and born Catholic, but had categorically and emphatically lapsed as soon as he was old enough to make up his own mind.

Unfortunately, his extended family had decided to go the whole religious hog for the funeral - I know 100% it's the last thing he would have wanted, but I guess what they wanted won the day once he wasn't there to express an opinion anymore.

Even more unfortunately, the priest realised he was for the most part in a room full of heathens and launched into a chastisement of the mourners - a lengthy and impassioned full-on "you can maybe avoid burning in hell if you repent and come over/back to us" spiel.

Going by the growing undercurrent of restive shuffling and sotto voce muttering as this carried on, I got the feeling someone was eventually going to crack and tell him to take a f**k to himself, but the mood was lightened by our old drummer unsuccessfully trying to stifle a burp which echoed round the place like a gunshot.

Here, much like anyone who tries to coerce a family member into a religious wedding, despite knowing they don't believe in it, his family are c-nts.

In the case of a wedding, or say a Christening, it's a particularly strong indictment of the pointlessness in trying to reason with the herd-like mentality of some religious people. You can test the situation and evaluate their standpoint. I've seen this one play out in real life, as I imagine a few of you have:

1) Couple is getting married. They are not religious (strictly speaking they shouldn't get married either then, but that's another issue).
2) Parent or family of one of both partners is religious, or at least want to be seen as such in their community.
3) Couple feels pressured into a religious ceremony.

So, examine what's actually going on here.
Either:

1) The parent of family doesn't really have faith but for social acceptance in their community they feel the need to "stick with tradition", or;
2) The parent or family does have faith in the religion, knows that the couple being married doesn't, but wants them to have a religious ceremony nonetheless, because 1), or;
3) The parent or family does have faith in the religion, and doesn't know that the couple have "lost their faith". The couple don't want to tell their family the truth and go ahead with the ceremony.

The psychology of each situation is as follows:

1) Social acceptance is more important to the family than respect for the faith in question. They are happy for the a sham ceremony to take place for the look of things. They are in essence spitting in the faces of their friends and neighbours who do believe.
If God (of that religion) does exist, he will know about their blasphemy and they will all go to Hell. They will be raped there by the Devil for all eternity.
2) Social acceptance is more important to the family than respect for the faith in question. They are happy for the a sham ceremony to take place for the look of things. They are in essence spitting in the faces of their friends and neighbours who do believe.
If God (of that religion) does exist, he will know about their blasphemy and they will all go to Hell. They will be raped there by the Devil for all eternity.
3) Family acceptance and an easy life is more important to the couple being married than respect for the faith in question. They are happy for the a sham ceremony to take place to keep their family happy. They are in essence spitting in the faces of their family who do believe.
If God (of that religion) does exist, he will know about their blasphemy and they will go to Hell. They will be raped there by the Devil for all eternity.

 

This is the insincerity of faith in practice. It's bad enough when those that don't believe would rather mock the beliefs of their families rather than be honest with them, but worse still when those who profess to believe in the religion are happy to encourage others to blaspheme for the sake of keeping their stupid old gran or reactionary neighbours in the dark about the heathens in their midst.

Personally if I was God, blasphemers would go to the worst part of Hell, because they're ripping the piss. They'd be in a worse bit than straightforwardly evil people like Hitler and Gray Glitter.

Of course, the whole thing is bullshit, so it doesn't really matter, but it's always amusing watching relatively rational people tying themselves in knots trying to accommodate the moronic tenets their credulous kin still cling to.

[Granny Danger]

There will be many folk in Scotland and the rest of the UK who will call themselves Christians on the census form but who will not accept the basic tenets of Christianity (eg they will accept that Jesus did not really rise from the dead).

I have seen this referred to as ‘social Christians’.  Not sure where that leaves their ‘faith’ tbh.

 

[dorlomin]

12 hours ago, stuartsmfc said:

Are you 100% sure that all religion is false? Bit of a bold statement, the best minds that have ever lived can't prove or disprove God/religion...yet P&B seem to have it all figured out.

The scientific method is a way of creating models to predict the physical universe around us and selecting the models that make the most useful or accurate predictions.
Models have to be testable, that is make testable predictions to compare to other models and should more than one model make similarly useful predictions, the one with the fewest assumptions should be chosen (Ockham's Razor).

It does not say there is no god, or no ghosts or no vampires. It simply says there is nothing in the universe we observe that currently requires such an explanation. All the various theologies and metaphysics do not offer any useful tool to understand the world around us.

There is no way to falsify that which does not affect the physical world thus it has no use to science.

 

[Cosmic Joe]

6 minutes ago, Granny Danger said:

There will be many folk in Scotland and the rest of the UK who will call themselves Christians on the census form but who will not accept the basic tenets of Christianity (eg they will accept that Jesus did not really rise from the dead).

I have seen this referred to as ‘social Christians’.  Not sure where that leaves their ‘faith’ tbh.

 

The 2011 census results make interesting reading. People who regard themselves as having no religion are far fewer in parts of the west of Scotland where there is a significant religious divide. For example Airdrie would appear to have an unusually small number of non-religious people (22%) compared to the national average of 37%. It would be interesting to find out what proportion of the 35% of those who describe themselves as Church of Scotland and the 32% of Roman Catholics actually are adherents of their respective faiths...

[The Moonster]

13 hours ago, stuartsmfc said:

Are you 100% sure that all religion is false? Bit of a bold statement, the best minds that have ever lived can't prove or disprove God/religion...yet P&B seem to have it all figured out.

Here, have some proof of Jesus not existing and Odin being the true God of all mankind.

 

[Granny Danger]

Just now, The Moonster said:

Here, have some proof of Jesus not existing and Odin being the true God of all mankind.

 

Has me convinced.  You don’t see Muslims providing that sort of proof do you?

 

[Fullerene]

1 hour ago, Granny Danger said:

There will be many folk in Scotland and the rest of the UK who will call themselves Christians on the census form but who will not accept the basic tenets of Christianity (eg they will accept that Jesus did not really rise from the dead).

I have seen this referred to as ‘social Christians’.  Not sure where that leaves their ‘faith’ tbh.

Also referred to as "culturally Christian".  Quite possibly they don't  even believe in God but are too polite to say so.

Also explains why there are so many people in the world who call themselves "Jewish Atheists".  

[Fullerene]

2 hours ago, sugna said:

That's a reasonable question:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot

It's interesting that objections raised by philosophers on that page, to the form of the argument, are all examples of special pleading. You'd have to presume they're aware of that, but it's almost as though they are saying "that analogy doesn't apply because it would lead to a conclusion that I don't like." Maybe there's too much coin in that old philosophy game for them to cede one of the main seams.

But in principle you're correct: apart from the fact that billions of teapots have been observed, and no gods have, an orbiting teapot isn't all that much more likely than an unspecified supernatural being of some sort. The margin of this Internet is too narrow to contain a suitable estimate of non-supernatural probability, given our (non-) observations to date, with enough 9s after the decimal point; so 100% does a pragmatic job.

Surely the gravitational pull of Jupiter would make it unlikely the teapot was still within the orbit of Mars - or have I just not properly understood what this article is all about ...
 

[Granny Danger]

26 minutes ago, Fullerene said:

Also referred to as "culturally Christian".  Quite possibly they don't  even believe in God but are too polite to say so.

Also explains why there are so many people in the world who call themselves "Jewish Atheists".  

At least there are lots of folk who are willing to call themselves “Jewish Atheists”.  Don’t see many  folk calling themselves “Muslim Atheists”.

 

[Dee Man]

1 hour ago, Angusfifer said:

The 2011 census results make interesting reading. People who regard themselves as having no religion are far fewer in parts of the west of Scotland where there is a significant religious divide. For example Airdrie would appear to have an unusually small number of non-religious people (22%) compared to the national average of 37%. It would be interesting to find out what proportion of the 35% of those who describe themselves as Church of Scotland and the 32% of Roman Catholics actually are adherents of their respective faiths...

I know plenty of people in the west of Scotland who would identify as prods/kafflicks, and no doubt would have put that on their census, but are in no way religious whatsoever.

This is probably not mind-blowing information so I apologise for wasting everyone's time. 

[Mr Pikey]

22 hours ago, banana said:

If anything, the decline of Christianity in the UK/West has made us individually less well-equipped to handle issues surrounding mortality, and therefore issues surrounding life, meaning. See: rampant depression, directionless young adults still living with their parents at 30, low birth rates, militant atheism, consumerism, hedonism, etc. used to fill the void. 

There you go,  people can't accept they're going in a hole  in the ground to be eaten by worms . 

[Dee Man]

10 minutes ago, Mr Pikey said:

There you go,  people can't accept they're going in a hole  in the ground to be eaten by worms . 

I'm not. I saw a video of a Tibetan sky burial yesterday where the dead are left on a hillside for the vultures to tear apart. 

I'm having some of that. 

[Mark Connolly]

I'm going for a good fire before I possibly end up in a bad one.

[Hillonearth]

3 hours ago, Granny Danger said:

At least there are lots of folk who are willing to call themselves “Jewish Atheists”.  Don’t see many  folk calling themselves “Muslim Atheists”.

 

The "heads gone" thread on Saudi Arabia's equivalent of P&B is probably full of them.

[BishopLenBrennan]

On ‎27‎/‎10‎/‎2018 at 14:28, Fullerene said:

I have never encountered a talking snake

[Sergeant Wilson]

2 hours ago, Dee Man said:

I'm not. I saw a video of a Tibetan sky burial yesterday where the dead are left on a hillside for the vultures to tear apart. 

I'm having some of that. 

Tastes like pork.