The function of religion ?

[Herodes]

I'm an atheist and have the following standpoint:

 - All religions are hoaxes, making people belive in non-existing gods.

Religions serve the following purposes:

1. Making people have some comfort in their lives, having something else than themselves to pray to and look up to. This is mostly culturrally dependent,
most people adhere to the religion were they grew up, and what was ingrained in them from early childhood.

2. To keep uneducated people in control.

3. To keep power and control in a central position.

If religion was all about love to your God, and it was all a mental thing, there would be no need for churches, and all accessories that goes with a religion.

It's sad that a God-fearing man goes regularily to church to get closer to his maker. He could've been just as close to his God in his couch at home.

Many religious entities collect money, and are rather greedy, there are internal battles about power and control, just think of the Vatican.

I think it's rather sad that in 2012, so many people put their belief in something that doesn't exist. You may pray, and you may feel that your prayers were heard,
and things turn for the better in your life, but most of the time, the prayers are futile, and the only one that can change anything in your life is yourself.

States need to separate themselves from religion, and any religious society needs to take care of itself. Many religious societies does serve a good purpose in their
municipality, and there's nothing wrong with that,  and I do respect anyone that has their faith, but I don't think there's any God of any sorts, and people need to take
responsibility for their own lives.

Will the earth ever come to a point where people are so educated that they understand that science is the only true answer, and that everything else is fairytales ?

As much as I respect any Christian or any devoted religious person from any other religion (I may think his belief is a joke, but I would never say it to his face to force a confrontation in disrespect), I don't think any religions should have any special protection under the law.

Part of the problem is that Religion is so ingrained into the culture of most countries, that many people don't even question it.

Education will put the power in the hands of the people to learn about the world around them, and will remove the power of the leaders of their religion over them.

As an atheist, I don't think your religion defines whether you're a good person or not, that's more down to the person itself, and the values you've been taught in your upbringing, and what you've learned through your education.

Now, with the recent uproar about the 'Innocence of Muslims'-movie, people shouldn't get upset about it. If they don't like it, they should simply ignore it, and don't speak of it. Killing people, making riots etc. and claim that it's because of this movie, this is not right. People are always responsible for what they do.

If I were a Christian, and someone mocked my religion and called me a religious fool, and I got angry and burned down their house, that would be completely unacceptable by me, and I would need to take the full penalty for it.

Some people say we should not provoke 'islam' through cartoons, movies etc. And this may seem like the easy way out. But what if we continously bombarded Islam with this material, would they keep rioting every day of the week, every week, every month and every year, or would they finally sit down and say to themselves: "I'm tired of fighting, I can be a good muslim, no matter what any people say about my religion".

Islam doesn't receive more goodwill by having it's followers react like this, I would think most sivilized people just seeing this for what it is; outright crimes. Also I think a lot of the people that we see rioting in the streets, are only using this movie as an excuse for acting like they do.

Is there a single other Religion in the world were the members would've reacted like this over a movie ?

What do you all think ?

[Bjork]

The movie never existed.  The riots are false flag attacks to prepare the public for the coming Iran invasion.

Also, aliens.

[Herodes]

The movie never existed.  The riots are false flag attacks to prepare the public for the coming Iran invasion.

Also, aliens.

How could I vote this insightful ?

[Luno]

Religon and faith are two different things! There exist corrupt churches and governments and in some places they serve a common goal.

Don't confuse the institution with the congregation. Believing in God can be a useful tool to one self. Most Atheists believe in lots of things, they just use other words.

(I can't believe I'm the defender of religion on this forum)

[Herodes]

Believing in God can be a useful tool to one self. Most Atheists believe in lots of things, they just use other words.

Yes, when I believe in my own ability to go through with a demanding taks, I could say:

"I am convinced I can do this, and I believe in my ability to do it!"

A Christian could say:

"I am convinced that God will help me in reaching my goal, and I believe he will help me in doing my best to achive said Goal".

Then the Christian and myself both work our asses off, we both achive the goal, and I say:

"I achived my goal by faith (ie. believing that I could actually do this, and planning, and executing the plan)"

The Christian would say:

"Thanks to my hard work and my belief in God, I was able to see the difficult task through, and was successful in the end"

It's sometimes said: "God helps those who helps themselves".

[Luno]

Why do you help others then?

[Herodes]

Why do you help others then?

Please elaborate.

[Luno]

BTW, about Christianity. Jesus was not a Christian, he walked from city to city to teach people not to fight each other but focus on the real roman oppressors and the corruption in the Jewish community and priesthood.

John was worse, he roamed the streets of Rome starting riots burning roman shops down and attacking soldiers, and was also thrown in jail.

Just think of the early sixties and the Black Panthers, same thing.

Paulus started Christianity 75 years after Jesus's dead and formalized it some. It grew by being under the radar networking at secret meetings (oldskool P2P). When Rome, after some 250 years, discovered how massive it was, they assimilated it building churches for them and inventing bishops on the payroll. You can say that the Chatolic church today is a fusion of the Roman empire and the forces that threatened to overthrow it.

So government has known for a long time how to keep religious grass rots on a leash, but it does'nt foil the message to me. I'm no sheep.

cheres

[Luno]

Elaborating Herodes:

When you say that you pad yourself on the shoulder when you accomplish something, think about the people in your life (parents, teachers, employers) who believed in you on the way to teach you the skills that make you feel competent now. No one can take credit for their own accomplishments. The person you, is a sum of other peoples efforts, a lot of them being unselfish. Being who you are today is a result of other people believing in you. If you build a house yourself, the guy at the lumberyard, who is paid 8$/hour hating his job, is helping you too.

Don't describe the relation between a Christian and God as a kind of abusive father figure punishment / reward system. God is also an idea to remind you about how to be an open minded person not giving in to your own preconceptions about other people and all the other kinds of inhumane agendas that are pushed by media trying to make us more afraid, more racist, less tolerant, more dependant on them. No I'm not a survivalist, but community and state society are two different things. Religion is not fact based. Neither is love. I have no problem with that.

[Herodes]

Luno, yes, we're the sum of everything we've experienced along the way, and that of everyone who has helped us.

As for the rest of what you say, I am not sure if we're on the same page. I'm not a religious man, but I respect everyone's right to practise the religion of their chosing.

[Rassah]

When someone believes something stupid (alien anal probes, bigfoot, communism as viable economic policy), you should at most point and laugh, but at the least explain to them why their beliefs are misguided, ridiculous, and stupid. Why should religion be exempt???

[stochastic]

When someone believes something stupid (alien anal probes, bigfoot, communism as viable economic policy), you should at most point and laugh, but at the least explain to them why their beliefs are misguided, ridiculous, and stupid. Why should religion be exempt???

People are just afraid to die.  They don't want to be insignificant things in the universe so they have hope for some believe that they are not insignificant.

Will you laugh at a mother who says about her dead child, "My baby is in heaven now"?

[Buffer Overflow]

All I can say about religion is:

If god does exist; I hope he's got some good excuses.

[JoelKatz]

Why do you help others then?

The same reason he doesn't kill apostates or become a suicide bomber. If someone genuinely believes that god wants them to kill you, should they do it?

[Herodes]

senbonzakura:

It seems like I never stopps to be flabbergasted as the reaction of some people, no matter they religion.

In all fairness, I think most religions have their fair share of outrage.

[dancupid]

Religion is ubiquitous and universal in human culture (in some form for hundreds of thousands of years). Anthropologically that suggests it's a pretty significant component of evolved human behavior.
It's only after the enlightenment that we get any notion of the possibility that it's all nonsense.
The question really isn't one of belief - it must be one of evolution. Religion must have provided a substantial evolutionary advantage otherwise it couldn't have existed at all.
The majority of people who have ever existed would have followed religious forms because they would not have had any alternative and simply conformed to the social norms of the time and place they happened to have been born in.
It's no different for people today - the norm says 'work 8 hours a day helping this company make money for shareholders' - and people go along with it; even though it's completely pointless and irrational.
Everything we do is irrational - if we were rational we would immediately see how insignificant and pointless our personal existence is (based on the facts that make it clear that we are trivial specs of dust in an infinite universe - our actions are hopeless and irrelevant and arbitrary) and kill ourselves.
People do not live their lives rationally - they are driven by the genetic imperative to survive. If religion means survival then religion is the way to go.

[Rassah]

The evolutionary reasons are fairly basic: we as a species survive by trying to learn about and explain the world around us, and we survive by being social/tribal and rejecting other tribes so they don't encroach on our land and food supplies. Since we couldn't explain everything well a long time ago, we came up with religious stories. And since we're tribal, we tended to kill anyone who wasn't like us. Doesn't even necessarily mean that the religion outcome was evolutionarily beneficial. It could just be a side-effect of the previous two parts that we somehow managed to survive in spite of, like our appendixes and bad teeth.
As for being outraged over movies, that's to be expected when people are raised with the idea that they shouldn't question and shouldn't let evidence influence them. Yay for science instead.

[stochastic]

The question really isn't one of belief - it must be one of evolution. Religion must have provided a substantial evolutionary advantage otherwise it couldn't have existed at all.

That is not true, there are a lot of things that evolved that have absolutely no beneficial function.  Religion is more likely a symptom of a emotion brain along with a cognitive brain.

[Bitware]

Function of organised religion is control. Its tools are violence, ignorance, fear and guilt.

[sippsnapp]

The way i understand most religions are spending hope and giving a guidance on ethics.
However, the hope thing is hardly to archive by an other way, think a moment how many people live in bad conditions, for me its no wonder so many believe in some sort of god.