The second paragaph satisfies my want for an explanation very well.

Yes and No.

You did not fix anything, I meant exactly what I said.

You said it was the most harmful, meaning the other interpretations still had something harmful about them. Everything "harmful" about religion only comes from the fundamentalist point of view. Tell me one thing harmful about the moderate or even liberal interpretation about religion. (remember harm is different from accuracy or truthfulness)

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Nov 30 2007, 10:49 pm by MillenniumArmy.

Almost all religion is harmful to the critical thinking skills and even the identity of a child, and is a huge waste of time and money for adults, religion means lost productivity for society, and lost leisure time for individuals, spent feeling guilty and subservient. This is real harm, I singled out fundamentalism because of the threat of crusades and jihad. That is the start religion's negative influence on the goals of a community, and the self determination of children. If you think want to define every belief with any negative side effect as fundamentalist, along with the people that hold those beliefs, go right ahead, but that definition would include a vast number of people.

You are doing it again. Although many things you have said do apply to some people, it also does not apply to many people as well. You are making the same mistake many people are making; making general assumptions about religion and what it does as a whole based on your personal opinion and observations and for some, pretending that they've never encountered such people that are different from what they've assumed.

For instance, I know many atheists who are very unintellectual. One person I know is emo and hates everything about life. Another one I know is failing all of his classes and chose to spend the rest of his life selling drugs and forming a whore house. One atheist I know whose very intelligent and is going to a very nice college came from a horrible family; he hates his parents, his parents hate him, and as a child he's been abused extremely badly; he's always in a pessimistic mood and has an attitude problem. In one of our group projects for English, we had one atheist who was such an asshole and didn't care about anything at all. He didn't do his part on the project, thus all of us suffered and got a bad grade. And there are many other atheists I have seen that have nothing but bad things about them, and based on these personal observations, can I say that Atheism in general is unhealthy and harmful?

No, because that's not true for many atheists (and I would get flamed extremely bad for this too). I just made a general assumption about atheism based on my personal observations. One may also argue that I might've pretended that I might've encountered atheists who are nothing like my assumption and that I ignored them while formulating my generalization about atheism in general.

Also, about Islam. Can I say that all Islam is is a violent religious that form terrorists who strap bombs to themselves and blow people up? No because that's definately not true of many muslims. It just happens that these "muslims" who do terroristic deeds happen to be the loudest ones right now, since all we hear about on the news is what these "muslims" have been doing to our troops while ignoring the peaceful lifestyles of many Muslim people living around the world.


This is the real problem I have with people nowadays (both religious and nonreligious); making assumptions and stereotypes about each other based on their personal observations and selective bias. One may say that most people are like this, another may say that most people are actually like that. Whose right and whose wrong? We don't know, and we may never know.

Post has been edited 5 time(s), last time on Dec 1 2007, 5:27 am by MillenniumArmy.

All I said is that there are parts of non fundamentalist religion that are harmful, justifying my earlier choice of words. I did not say it in the first place because it is easily misinterpreted, as you have just shown.

Even though you're arguing against something that wasn't even said, I feel to the need to point out that your example doesn't even relate. You would be trying to make generalizations about atheists based off things they have done in parts of their life that have nothing to do with their choice not to believe in a god. Anti's examples were actually relating things people do in relation to their religion. What you did would be like me saying, "I know this one doctor who was a real sarcastic asshole when I met him at the bar. (ad nauseum) Based off these observations, can I say that doctoring in general is unhealthy and harmful?"

Correct. It doesn't make any sense. You're trying to say that people shouldn't make opinions based off just their own selective experiences by saying what you said, as if Anti was doing that. In turn, you ended up saying something completely and totally flawed in an entirely different way as well. I think I finally articulated this the way I wanted.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 1 2007, 7:05 pm by Dapperdan.

His weren't any different:

Religion is like your way of living a spiritual life. How is it in any way directly affecting one's critical thinking skills? I mean, alot of us are really into science, we are good at math, and many of us are in computer science and engineering. Critical thinking skills has nothing to do with religion. We can do physics problems easily. Those who lack critical thinking skills just aren't naturally smart in life and whether they are religious or not has no influence.

People aren't only religious because they were taught (or for those of you, "brainwashed") as children. You do realize that children are able to make choices for themselves later on right? Infact, most christians I know come from atheist or buddhist families. What's more, their parents even forbade them from going to church or believing in God. But now that they're away from home, they go to church everyday. What becomes the indentity of a child does not depend on whether they are religious or not when growing up as they could become anything once they can think for themselves.

Irrelevant. Spending time and money doing something you love or serve is not harm to an individual. If you think it is a waste of time and money, don't do it.

Yes believing in God and living life as a Christian definately means lost productivity for society. If it weren't for christianity, we'd be having flying cars right now. Infact, all AIDS and all cancers would be gone too! But on a more serious note, issues like abortion and stem cell research, they're based on pro-choice and pro-life, not pro-god or anti-god. Many christians are pro-choice and totally supportive of such productivity. Well then, whose pro-life? It's mostly the fundies who are against it, but since the fundies were already eliminated when making these observations... "Lost productivity for society" in this sense depends on whether you have conservative or liberal stances.

Irrelevant as well. Lost leisure time for an individual is not harm. But if you beg to differ, then we should eliminate the true culprit: school.


Again all examples of harm are observed in some christians, but they aren't directly influenced by their beliefs in God.

Critical thinking skills have everything to do with religion. Do you really think we would be having a war in iraq if the people habitually questioned the motives and judgment of their leaders? This is something learned from religious parents, who teach their children to trust authority because it is authority, instead of trusting the experience and knowledge the authority represents.

for example:
Child: Why is the sky blue?
(assume parents are not educated about the scattering properties of light)
Religious parent: God made it blue.
Secular parent: I don't know, let's see if someone else does. <enter google/wikipedia>

Or an example for an imperative:

Parent: Don't swim in that pond.
Child: Why not?

R. Parent: Because I said so.
R. Parent(2): <make up alligator story>
S. Parent: Because we will be late for dinner.
S. Parent: Because that is a sewage lagoon.

Gg'ed yourself before you even said it.


How many times have you heard someone answer a "why" with "god did it"? (essentially)

Although I do question whether people act the way anti noted in the last example because they are religious, or they are religious because they act that way. Just a thought.

Those have everything to do with the intellect and education of parents and individuals, not religion.

The point I'm making is that you can't just simply say that the way children are raised (as in whether they are taught religion or not) will automatically define who they are. Sure there are many that actually end up becoming what they were taught, but there are also those who do not automatically become what they are taught.

For me, none. However I am aware of the presence of such people who say such things and am IMO annoyed by these people if they were to use such answers seriously.

But you CAN simply say that the way children are raised does not AT ALL depend on whether they are religious or not? You just gg'ed yourself, again.

Let me ask you this, how have you been raised? What do your parents believe?

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on Dec 2 2007, 12:01 am by MillenniumArmy.

Dapperdan needs a lesson in free will. I've ready many of MA's posts and they are right. Just because a child was grown up with the parents ideology that doesn't mean they are going to stay with it for a later chapter of their life.

Also to continue on from there, if every child was to actual keep there ideology/beliefs their parents had taught them then if you asked them at the age 16, would they all say they would keep it?

Free will is to a large extent an illusion. We are shaped by our environment fare more than most of us care to admit. The answer you get to the question will depend largely on the beliefs of the parents, the more crazy the belief, the more likely it is to be passed on with defense mechanisms intact.

I never saw a reason to respond to this before, but I guess since the topic is back up I might as well say something.

I completely fail to see how my answer would be relevant to the topic at all unless you are trying to gg your own arguements, again.


My own experiences will fail to prove or disprove anything, as you have already said yourself. But, if you really feel the need to know the answer, then I may as well provide it, just let me know.

So you're saying that I will always bend to the whim of my family because "free will is to a large extent an illusion"?

Wheres scientific proof of your claims?

I don't agree with you because I have the free will to do anything I choose to.


Oh wait, I forgot. This forum is full of kids, thats right.

You didn't gg anything. Our whole discussion, even anti's, had never been relevant to the topic in the first place (because this topic was about the blasphemy challenge link jordann posted). All you are trying to do is "gg" my posts by skewing interpretations of my quotes and completely disregarding the point of what I'm saying.

Yes I am fully aware of that. Indeed my question is "off topic" from our discussion but the reason I asked that question was so that i would hope to rather hear something new and useful. But if you don't want to answer that's fine with me. If you wish to continue "gg"ing my posts again, then again that's fine with me; I'm sure we've got better things to be doing.

We are all guilty of this. This also why I try to stay away from these forums and focus more on the mapping ones.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 22 2007, 9:57 am by MillenniumArmy.

Wrong,Wrong,Wrong and Wrong. All those situations fail to meet the standards of free will. But to make things fair I'll provide the prove.
Hmm. So a buddist child will most likely leave then a Christian child? Well that doesn't seem right. And crazy beliefs? I believe most or at least one would want to get out of those things. (Ex: Cults)

So heres one. Remember that thing about Jonestown and how this cult preacher manage to pick up poor people and then make them fund him in his church. Then when he had enough money they then flew to Guyana were they built a town for him. Then after some suspicions the army was coming so Jim Jones(cult leader) told everyone to go kill themselves with a poison mixed drink. Now out of the 900(?) people one women spoke out against this insanity. Her name was Christine. She didn't wanted to end her life because of this one man. Then out of knowing, the brainwashed people killed her. (Very sad. Well now she has to await resurrection.) Now you can't tell me that those 900(?) people couldn't rise and over thrown this one man? If Christine could do it why not them? She proved there was free will and they rather take their own life then just overthrow and get of there? And to make matters worst alot of the children also didn't want to die but as cowards they were the insane people killed them too.