Thursday, November 11, 2004 at 7:39 PM I'm an atheist, but I don't hate religion. The truth is that even though religion causes all sorts of problems, it also brings about a great deal of good--even though it is based on the ridiculous idea that there is this thing called "God"--by giving people positive moral codes to live by, by bringing people together into communities, by getting people together for charity work etc... you can list all the bad things that religion has caused, of course, from religious wars to the retarded rejection of new ideas, but if you think that religion is the only human institution that causes problems then speaking of retarded you'd better walk yourself down the hall to the special ed classroom and try finger-painting instead of philosophy. The Nazis weren't particularly religious, and look at all the shit that they pulled. People will always find a way to do bad and/or stupid things, and will justify those things with whatever is handy, whether it be religion or politics or science or whatever. There's only one aspect of religion (or at least Christianity) that may predispose religious people to act more badly or stupidly than a non-religious person, and that's the whole thing where most Christians are 100% sure that their take on the world is completely right, and that people who don't believe it are going to burn for eternity--sounds like a recipie for intolerance and close-mindedness to me. BUT--there are also elements of Christianity that stress loving everyone, not judging (leaving judgement to god)... the problem is the evil morons who only pay attention to certain parts of their religion--the ones that allow them to look down on other people and close their minds to the world--while ignoring the parts that tell them to love and not judge. In other words the people are flawed more than the religion is flawed, and if those fucktards didn't have their religion to justify their asshole-ishness then they'd find something else that would let them heap their shit on the world. But just so i don't loose any of my atheist street cred let me hasten to add that God is a silly idea that everyone would laugh at if they hadn't had it drilled into their heads since they were two years old. But like i said i don't have a problem with it at all, as long as believers act like decent, open-minded human beings (as opposed to tying gay guys to fences and beating them to death "cuz gawd says homer-sexualitee is a sin durf durf") —daveman |
