the next 200 years.

But before I continue
-No put downing of religion or post containing pure blasphemous words like christians are dumb or who cares about those bla bla bla.
-No spamming
-When going into detail provide sources such as well Christians in 1400 were known for killing people while now a days they still do bla bla bla.
-Don't go too off topic.
-No insulting of members. Finish a flame in a reasonable manor.

Now anyways lets look back at some things shall we...
-When woman were not allowed to vote or teach because this passage in the bible condemned it.
-How Slavery and Religion had close ties with each other.
-How race was treated by different religious aspects.
-Opposition towards birth control.
-Or when people just disliked the Beatles for no reason because of certain members with long hair.

Will Generations to come try to bury certain religions because of there attidude towards different people like what happend to older beliefs such as Ancient Egyptian beliefs, Norse and the Romans? Or will religions that have been here a while such as Hinduism manage to stay alive for the next 200 years.

I wish the neo-cons weren't plaguing America right now...

So many amazingly positive things have been done with religion.
The Pyramids, Ghandi's rebellion against the British, Martin Luther King's life-work to name a few.

Religion is so powerful. It can give one the faith necessary to complete tasks of extraordinary proportions. Not only that, but Christianity preaches love and peace, Hinduism preaches acceptance and self-lessness, Taoism preaches togetherness, Islam is all about the same stuff. I mean, religion can be a great source of faith in all things and gives many the way to lead happy and industrious lives.

However, it's power has been too often corrupted as in the most recent case of middle-america and the war on terror. Do we not see how Bush and the neo-cons hijacked religion to preach social values and lead us off to war in the middle-east?
I wish that the bible and other holy texts were not so vague and they made it clear that everyone can make their own set of beliefs as long as they are peaceful and loving. I wish people didn't base laws off of religion. This is where problems come, because organized religion ends up with both indoctrination of the youth and often times these freedom limiting laws with no separation between church and state where there should be. Thats how we end up finding ourselves in this fucked up "war on terror".

I will always stand by the side of religion, but too often, there are bad people in the world who abuse the power. I guess it is just a matter knowing who and who not to follow.

"He who knows not and knows not that he knows not is a fool; avoid him.
He who knows not and knows that he knows not is a student; teach him.
He who knows and knows not that he knows is asleep; wake him.
He who knows and knows that he knows is a wise man; follow him."

If people are smart, they will never abandon religion. It gives us purpose, meaning, love, peace with ourselves and others. Religion will always exist as long as humans are smart. Besides, a religion could never be buried in this time, think of how almost every place has a melting pot population, think of how much is recorded, these things could never be forgotten in this age of technology. Over time, maybe they will finally understand the dangers of it as well, that it can be a plague as in the case of Nazi Germany, or in the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
Accept the good religion can give us, if it is not for you, and you can find meaning, motivation, love and acceptance without it, then fine. Hopefully we will soon learn from our mistakes, however, and make religion something that much more positive.

While all that is true in that religion provides good moral backing to people in general, I believe it's been tainted too far. Not to the extent where it has become a bad thing, just in a way that its outreach to the public can be negatively questioned (well it always has been). With the newer generations of free-thinkers who choose to focus on the corruption (by corruption I point to yenku's statement, and the general extremism and die-hard of religion), it's slowly been caving in.

Religion is a good thing to have in this world, however I think that people need to stop thinking off the basis of religion and its good moral reasonings and choose to take those whilst still respecting religion itself, and move away from beliefs. I'm not trying to say abandon religion, but for those select (hundred's of thousands of) people, free yourselves from its corrupted influence.

Also Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Religion was a good idea.

Spirituality is the only way to go

I believe religious apathy will grow. More and more people will either lack seriousness in religious practices or just simply stop caring anymore. This could already be observed for the past couple decades. Religion when used right can be amazing. However, if it is used wrongly it can be a problem. But when you think about it, it is human nature to use anything, whether it be meant for good, and rear its ugly head.

Religion... wonderful topic.

I'm concerned with certain religions. Regarding the war in the middle east (or perhaps war in general), religion is obviously too abused. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the muslim religion praises the killing of "infidels," and if you've killed enough you will be rewarded with 72 virgins in the afterlife. Considering the possibility that I am not in fact a muslim and therefore may be biased, this is a religion I want wiped off the face of the planet. Commending killing is not a practice I want established on Earth. The authority to kill should not be placed in the hands of anyone who claims that God is on their side, as they are all subject to humanity and therefore to being wrong. Religious wars are nasty, as there's no real way to determine who's side God is really on, and they give both sides an "excuse" to get rid of someone they don't like. The future of religion looks shaky, I think in the next 200 years it may continue to deteriorate. However, if we look pastward, there have been two "Great Awakenings" of religious faith in the U.S. spurred on by men. This brings me to another flaw in religion: men. The works like the bible and the koran are written by men and for men. It allows interpretation, which may not be exactly what we think it is. Look at the Christian bible, it condones witches. Today however, we believe generally that there's no such thing as witches. I've never personally seen a hag fly around on a broomstick, but I'm only one man and I may be wrong. I think the current religions will either deteriorate or be forced to adopt new views, or maybe merely discard old views in order to survive. There's an obvious benefit to religion, the community, the happiness, Christmas and giftgivine ( ), but some things need to be done away with.

Find me the passage from the Koran where it praises killing specifically.

What you pointed out was a misinterpretation by many who create the bias against the muslim religion. The Koran praises those who wage the holy war, or Jihad. The holy war is just fighting to preserve and spread your religion's influence and moral beliefs. People have said that is encouraging murder, but if you study the Koran, you know this is totally unreasonable.
Much more bias comes from a dispute on which texts to understand as the word of Muhammad or God, because they were rewritten from memory and by many different people. So many who actually practice the religion just push those texts aside and consider them BS. I forgot what these set of texts are, can someone refresh my memory?

Edit: Ah, they're called "Hadith". They're like supplements to the Koran.

And, remember, the holy war is thought to be the struggle against those who do not accept the faith. If a Muslim follows their 5 pillars of faith they would continue to try and convert them. This doesn't mean they have grounds to bomb people. Things like that just come from fanatics who are bound to be bred into any civilization based on religion or otherwise.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 28 2007, 1:01 am by yenku.

Post added up top =)

Well of course praising the Jihad is essentially the same thing. *Shrug* I dunno, but I think religion is going to go down the hole. I don't think it's such a bad thing, you can have your own beliefs without having a church, or be an aetheist. Whatever works, as long as you don't infringe on the rights of others.

Religion gives us a unified goal. It tended to create hemispheres of cultures and literature. What we have now- would not have existed without religion. Because religion gives us common goals to accomplish. One was education- which the Christians sought to spread their word toward other people. One is order. Without religion, or a fear of a greater being- a person is probably free to do bad things, awful things at his will. There might not have been any leaders at all! Tribes and tribal leaders were formed because tribal leaders could talk to spirits, and stuff or so they believed in.

Religion won't go down to the hole. There are still millions of people more than atheists who reside in the depths of religion. Just not too deep so you go fanatic and overly zealous.

EDIT:: And also on a side note, atheism is classified as a religion of no god. So in turn, it is a religion.

I don't pretend to know what will happen to religion in the next few hundred years, but I personally think that it will slowly deteriorate. It might not completely dissapear, but I guess only time will tell...


"Calling atheism a religion is like calling bald a hair colour." - Can't quite remember where I got that from...

I think the mechanizism in religion that drives people to do good is the faith. People who have strong faith are empowered to do great things, whether it is faith in god, faith in morals, faith in the public or faith in oneself. Religion just adds another base for faith to be found in.
Religion does not do good because it engenders fear of a higher power..

It drove us yenku. What would have been the motivational cause to unite and to drive us to develop new things without religion in the first place?

Perhaps simply the desire to better ourselves. Hypothetically speaking, if there was no religion I think I would be much the same person I am now, and I don't go around murdering babies...

Comfort. Tribes and villages are mechanically useful. Because we use manipulable and depletable resources, unlike wolves or other pack creatures, we have use for trade and cooperation between groups, not just individuals. Thus, in order to maximize the efficiency of that, we develop organization and government. Someone who, to use Vrael's example, goes around murdering babies would be detrimental to the tribe/village/group/government, and so it is in their interest to instate laws, morality aside. It also becomes evolutionarily useful for us to develop similar senses of morality, since that smooths things out until we have those laws, and makes them easier to place.

Umm, shit. EzDay posted before me. Oh well.

Tribal instinct (or whatever you want to call it)? Groups of individuals working together will always work better at acheiving a mutual goal (such as obtaining food) then a similarly sized... err... group of individuals where each one does its own thing. The individuals working together would prosper and be able to reproduce better and pass on their group-loving traits. Eventually, only the group-loving members of a species would be left, and each of them would be 'motivated' to 'unite', because it works better.

Humans constantly search for new things to discover and develop. Groups that try to learn new things will (again) work better than groups who don't, because they have better technology. Humans that have learnt to use fire and spears will hunt and eat better than humans who haven't. Therefore, the more 'advanced' humans would have an advantage over the more primitive humans and be able to drive them into extinction, leaving only the humans with that 'drive' to develop new things.

Hmm... I see that this is turning into another religious debate
Whoops...

What is "It"? Type clearly so others can perfectly understand. For now I can't really answer your question too well without knowing what "it" is. However, as I've already explained I believe the driving factor behind religion that makes it do such good things to people is faith.

Long term, religion looks like it is on the way out, the majority of religious people find religion less credible than science, this is extremely apparent in medical care, and other fields with tangible consequences.