This item text has been erased.

372 responses total.

It's both.  It depends on the interpretation.  I have seen people who treat
their religion as a burden and it saddens me.  I have seen people treat their
religion as an excuse for great atrocity and it angers me.  On the other hand,
I have seen people whose religion and faith served as a large touchstone in
their lives and seemed to truly grace them.

This response has been erased.

Because some people want and need the structure.

In the absence of religion, people find other stuff to fight over.  It's
more a commentary on human nature than on religion itself -- religion is
just a convenient excuse. Countries with strongly anti-religious governments
haven't exactly been known for being docile, either.

This response has been erased.

Do you really feel it is that few of people?

I have no qualm at all over religious affiliation on the end-user scale. 
But I do object when a religious organization becomes so powerful that
they become a force for immorality and unlawfulness on a national and
international scale. 

Unfortunately, it's the end-users who end up, each with their
own small donation, feeding the powerful organization.  But that's
true of citizenship, the Boy Scouts, the KKK, and other groups too.

Yeah, I think it's the relationship between religion and politics that
causes a lot of the trouble.  The ultimate example of that, of course, is
when you have an established church that's officially recognized by the
government.  That almost always causes problems.

I don't think it is religion . . . it is just human nature. You can 
make a "religion" out of anything. Atheists and scientists have their 
fights as well. Even the Unix crowd has their fights. Ever listened in 
on one of the Linux newsgroups? Some of them almost spit fire if you 
say something less than adulatory about their OS. Say we removed 
religion . . . what would stop people from getting "religious" about 
something else? Wait, hasn't that happened already in Soviet Russia? 
People can get fanatical about any idea. Religious ideas are no 
different, but since they are not subject to geneuinely rational 
scrutiny people can hold on to them with unusual tenacity. But then 
again, have you ever had a conversation with a Marxist, Freudian, 
Reichian, Emacsian, etc.? 

I'd characterize the dangerous, trouble-causing thing as faith, rather than
religion.  It's okay to believe things, but when people actively decide that
they are no longer going to use their intellects as a sanity check on their
beliefs, that's when things start to get ugly.  

I have yet to hear of a Linux-related suicide bombing, though. ;>

This response has been erased.

What is the religious aspect to the India/Pakistan conflict. I thought that
was more of a cultural and land dispute. (For a long time, Germany and France
fought over a strip of land between them, the Alsace-Lorraine region, and to
my knowledge, both countries were Catholic at the time of the dispute; Venice
has, in the past, allied with Islamic North Africa over Catholic Europe
despite its preponderance of Catholics; tribal cultures fight over land all
the time, and it's rarely about religion.)
 
Human populations fight. It's a sad fact of life, and religion is something
salient to fight over, but it's hardly the case that all major conflicts have
been about religion (neither of the World Wars was primarily about religion,
for that matter; the Nazis weren't singling the Jews out as a religious group,
they were singling them out as an ethnic group, as evidenced by the other
targets of the Concentration Camps: gypsies, Poles, gays, etc.).

Re #11: What about fork bombs?

This response has been erased.

If there was no religion, there'd be no clocks, books, or logical 
reasoning, at least not from Europe.  Religion of many different types 
has been an overwhelmingly positive influence on societies all over the 
world throughout history.  Not everything done in the name of religion 
is good, but neither is everything done in the name of anything.

Re #14: Has anyone been killed by a fork bomb?

This response has been erased.

The Muslim/Hindu conflict between Pakistan and India is really just
window-dressing.  The Muslims are NOT, ethnically, Indian.  The Hindus are
NOT, ethnically, Pakistani.  Some tribes converted one way, other tribes
converted another.  The conflicts between them continued.

Consider the Tamils.  So far as I know, they are, largely, Hindu.  But they
are NOT of the Indian majority.  Most of Sri Lanka is, so far as I know,
Hindu.  So why the fighting?

Indonesia is Muslim.  Yet the Timors are fighting there, too.

It ain't religion, mynxcat.  Really.

Religion arose because a bipedal primate acquired consciousness, but was
unable to understand almost everything in nature, except in the most crude
terms. "History" had not yet happened to start to provide context or
accumulate observations and experience and their interpretation.  Because
the species would benefit from mysticim at that stage, it is not too
surprising that humans are still gullible about mysticism today. 

#16 does not follow. There would not bee *religious* books, clocks, or
(il)logical reasoning, but good proportions of populations have been
entirely secular in every age - with art, music...and clocks.

# 4 ("In the absence of religion, people find other stuff to fight over.") 
also does not follow. The USA adopted a constitution that separated
religion and government, and no "other stuff" has arisen that is as
divisive as what religion would have done in the absence of that
provision. 

Yeah, right, Rane.  1860-5 wasn't anything to remember, was it?

Economics? Well, money IS a powerful motivator. But that was just 6
years. It would be perpetual violent contention without separation of
state and religion.

I believe the lynx is one of the solitary cats, like the tiger, but not
like lions or house cats.

   re #19: You are aware that the split between India and Pakistan was
religious and not ethnic, aren't you?

This response has been erased.

The title of this item is SO reminiscent of "Philosophy:  Who needs
it?" that I almost expected a Randroid essay.

I think that the premise of #0 grazes the target but doesn't quite
smack it.  The conflicts are due to a lack of tolerance; this may
be underpinned by religious fundamentalism in some cases, but people
support intolerance with many ideologies.

The real solution to the religious conflicts is secularism.  If Pakistan
had a secular government instead of being strongly Islamist and there were
no discrimination, the Hindus of Kashmir wouldn't worry about what state
they lived in.  If India worked harder to be secular instead of giving
a free pass to Hindu radicals, some Muslims wouldn't have a problem with
living under Indian government (there is a strong current in Islam which
holds that nothing but an Islamic government will do, which is a serious
obstacle to secularism and modernization of the Muslim world).

I find the Muslim opposition to secularism disturbing, almost as disturbing
as the fundamentalist Baptist/Pentecostal/etc. opposition in the USA.
When religion ruled Western society, it was called the Middle Ages.  The
Muslim world is, by and large, still living in the Middle Ages save for
Western influence.  People who'd plunge Western society back into that
darkness are people I don't want in any position of influence.

Er, I think #23 was a horrible almost-pun on #9,#11,etc., but I may have
been distracted and mis-read the tail part of some item and thought it
was part of this one.  I will say that you don't often hear of
lynx-related suicide bombings, even though lynx does very occasionally
commit suicide on its own, if it doesn't bomb out first.  Fortunately
lynx doesn't panic.

resp:20  That's certainly true, I guess, from a certain point of 
view.  However, you can't climb instead my head to see what I've 
experienced, so you might as well drop any sense of scientific 
superiority.

This response has been erased.

Re #20: Right, the U.S. never has internal conflicts.  Well, except for the
Civil War, race riots, and Japanese internment.  But those don't count
because they're not religious, and only religion can produce evil in your
sight, right?

I stand by my comment.  In the absence of religious conflicts, people in the
U.S. have settled on race and economics as reasons to hate each other
instead.

Well, once something gets in someone's head, it becomes like a religion to
them, I guess. Whether the topic is religious or not. Rane is religiously
anti-religious, as are many other people. I say again, fanaticism is not
merely in the domain of the traditionally religious. 

The examples in #30 are all "incidents", not over-riding principles.  Sure
they are "evil" (wrong), but religious conflict beats them all - as
demonstrated all over the world today. Of course all sorts of people hate
other all sorts of people, and always will. But nothing beats the religion
conflict. That's why it's #1 in the Bill of Rights. Other conflicts are
addressed by later amendments, correcting various discimininations
(sexual, slavery, etc) that were once accepted. The nation was founded in
part to address #1. 

The man generally considered the worst murderer of the 20th Century -- Josef
Stalin -- was building an atheist government. Second in line is Adolph Hitler,
whose specific religious affiliation is still hotly debated, it was so vague.
Sure, Osama bin Laden may, in retrospect, earn the #3 position, although there
are plenty of non-religious monsters to compete with him for that one.
Meanwhile, the two biggest names for peace in the same century -- Ghandhi and
ML King, Jr. -- were very religious men.
 
Religion is a component of ethnic or social identification. As such, it can
be used to justify all the most disturbing wrongs, but non-religious ideology
can and has been used to justify the same degree of wrongs. It's not about
religion, it's about ideology, and intolerance.

re #20: Rane, medieval monasteries were about the only keepers or 
makers of books in Europe during their time.  The first printed book in 
English was the Gutenberg Bible.  The monasteries moved clocks from the 
hourglass to the mechanical clock because they needed accurate 
timekeeping in order to keep their schedule of religious devotions.  

Logical reasoning was developed by and for religious thinkers in that 
period.  The questions "How many angels can dance on the head of a 
pin?" and "If a tree falls in the forest with no one around to hear it, 
does it make a sound?" are two classic religious logic questions.  
There was logical thinking in Europe before that, but it was developed 
much, much more extensively by church thinkers.

Labeling religion as superstition and mysticism does not prove that 
it's not beneficial to society, or that it hasn't been beneficial 
throughout history.

Re #29:  Ah, now it's obvious why the period around the year 1865 doesn't
ring any bells for you.  It was rather eventful for the USA.

The American Civil War was 1860-5.

Rane, you are NOT nearly as stupid as you pretend.  I would like you to stop
pretending.  You DO know better, and have said so elsewhere.  The colonies
had established churches (e.g., the Church of Virginia) from the very
beginning.  And yet, there was very little fighting between the colonies. 
If differences of religion is the basis of all conflict, and if conflict is
inevitable when religions differ, why would there be so little fighting in
between the colonies?  And why was such fighting as there was NOT based on
religion?

Yes, I know the countries of Pakistion (East and West, one nation)
and India were separated, BY THE INVADER, on the basis of religion.
And Pakistan was separated from Afghanistan by what would make a more
defensible border for the British abandoning Afghanistan.  However,
I contend that religion was just one aspect of the difference.  In fact,
Pakistanis (and Bangladeshi) are NOT the same as the Indians.  (Hypothesis:
Hindu caste lines follow Indian tribal lines.  Given the age of the two,
that would be a fun hypothesis to explore.)

India has significant populations of Buddhists, Sikhs and Christians
(Christianity arrived ca AD 400, WELL before the British, *almost* before the
British *were* British).  While Sihks and Hindus tend to go at it now and
again, and Sikhs and Muslims, the Buddhists and Christians seem not to be
involved.  (I did hear on this evening's news that a Christian church was
burnt out today, but I did not hear in which city that incident occurred).

I contend the "religious" divisions in India are *really* tribal divisions
(just as they are in many other parts of the world).  But nobody wants
to admit that something besides religion might possibly be involved,
so they ignore the elephant.

Re #34: that monestaries played those roles does not mean that the roles
would not have been played by others in a secular evolution of society.

I also stated that mysticism WAS of benefit to the development of
human societies. (We are seeing again "selective reading and
misinterpretation", as often occurs in these discussions.)

For example: I have not said anywhere that "differences of religion is the
basis of all conflict". I have only said that mixing religion and state
functions leads to conflicts (in other words to that effect). This certainly
occurred amongst the colonies and the realization of this led to the
separation of church and state amendment to the Constitution.

I disagree.  The Church and State were "separated" only because no one wanted
another State's Church chosen as the Nation's Church.  "Establish" was a term
of art, with a very specific meaning that has largely been lost (or
deliberately ignored).

RIght - they werer all at each other's throats. It could have come to violence
if they did not all agree to disagree. ee
http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog/HAMSEP.html.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss