who believes in god! ( Archived) (253)

I don't know the reason but you keep misinterpreting what I am saying. I have no intention whatsoever to force my belief onto anyone. I'm just debating the topic just like you are and I'm not saying you're forcing anything on me. Just for the record because it's important: I never said I "know" there is no God. In fact I was saying that would be a crazy statement a few pages back on this thread.

I also don't see why you keep bringing up this "egoistic" and "righteous" labeling. I'm just stating my opinion and give logical explanations for certain things. How does that make me egoistic?

I admit that I believe overall the world would be better off without religion and spirituality. However, the reason for that is not because I think all spirituality has ill effects (that wouldn't be true) but because it undermines skeptical thinking. And that can be very dangerous.

I will try to explain this in another post. It's a bit complex so I have to think about how to summarize the idea concisely.

Ok, here is the problem.

What religion, spirituality, superstition, magic and paranormality have in common is that they are all faith based belief systems not grounded to rational reasoning or scientific evidence.

Some forms of these belief systems exist in every culture. It doesn't matter if they only accept one (e.g., Islamic countries) or allow religious freedom. What does matter is that still in today's society, even in the Western world, it is mostly off-limits to criticize or question someone's faith. Faith adopted - or never lost, I should say - a special status that is immune to skeptical thinking (although it is ok to attack someone of different faith in certain cultures).

Now one might say: "What's the harm? People can believe what they want." Yes they can, but faith is different. The fact that we are not supposed to question someone's faith can lead to extremism and unspeakable atrocities. Here is why.

You might remember the terrorist attacks of the London subway in 2005. These bombings were executed by islamic fundamentalists. However, they were not "cave dwellers" or crazy lunatics as many people might think, but regular citizens with very strong religious beliefs. Their purpose was not to spread evil or anger against freedom. They were solely motivated by believing these acts would make them martyrs and get them into paradise.

Their type of faith was no different from someone who believes in a benevolent God, in angels or in fairies or whatever. Again, a quick counter-argument might be that there is a big difference because these people are much "more extreme" and commit immoral crimes. Yet, there is no difference in faith for there are no degrees for it. By definition faith is something you need to have without evidence. We cannot say one faith is more valid than another because we have no reference point for it. We can only look at the effects and assign them a moral value. But these values are anchored in the rational world outside the realm of faith.

For these reasons it is important that all types of faith and belief are free to be analyzed critically and skeptically because blind acceptance of any spirituality, no matter how harmless it may be, can set the stage for potential religious extremism and fanaticism. Again, it is not necessarily a belief itself that I would criticize (unless it is outrageous and/or dangerous which is why we need to be critical) but the method how it was derived and the fact that it is not generally accepted to criticize in the first place.

We find by observation that creatures are more or less wise, noble, good, and the like.

These qualities do not belong to their essence, for if so, there could be no question of more or less.

Socrates and Plato were both men: humanity constituted their nature, and in the strict sense neither could be more truely and perfectly a man than the other, since the definition of man may be predicated of each.

The very fact, then, that one man or angel is more wise, noble, powerful than another proves that nobility, wisdom, power do not belong to the human or angelic natures as such or in themselves.

As they are not wise, etc., in themselves, or in virtue of their mere existence, their perfection must come to them from without, and we end with the idea of a being absolutely and perfectly wise, holy, strong, etc., because wisdom, holiness and strength are in him more than mere attributes - are, in short identical with his nature.

Thus, God is not merely charitable or loving, but He is charity.

Such a statement is untrue of any being escept God.