[ExI] atheists declare religions as scams.

Fri Jan 7 17:51:41 UTC 2011

Thanks for the reply Natasha, I'm going to try and answer your questions.

I'm not saying that understanding religion is not a valuable thing for our
society. It will help us understand the absurdity which our ancestral
parents cooked up with their imaginations. There are of course many good
moral rules in the religions, quite obviously!

We know there is a preferred behavior of which we should try to understand
and follow, and morality is the concept which describes this preferred
behavior. If no preferred behavior existed, we probably wouldn't exists and
sit here discussing this topic, as we wouldn't have survived in
the natural world.

Let's find a *true moral value*:

Here are two moral sentences from the Christian bible:

"You shall not kill/murder."
"Neither shall you steal."

There is both rational and logical reasons why most religions have these are
moral ideas, they originated as moral values which helps the society. Human
progress and prosperity is dependent on true moral values.

They can more clearly be described with a more modern understanding of this
moral concept:

"You should not initiate physical force against another person", according
to the non-aggression-principle (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-aggression_principle).

The above moral value stands up to logical and empirical examination:

If everyone murdered each other, we would all die.
Nobody likes to be bullied with, so we shouldn't physically attack each
other.
Nobody likes when others steal from them, so we should avoid such
activities.

These are truths that exists both for me personally, and it's the reality
that I'm evidently seeing in my society and amongst my friends. Neither of
which I steal from, and neither of them are stealing from me. I've
never threatened any of my friends physically, and neither have them towards
me.

Does that mean nobody ever attacks another person? No, the world is not
perfect and neither is biology. If I tell you that cats have one head and
two ears - you could verify that through empirical examination. Yet, there
are cats born with two heads and three or more ears. We are not above the
physical laws and the biological processes of which our bodies is manifested
with.

So that's how we establish moral values which are true and correct.

Let's move on to a *false moral value*:

"thou shalt not cast thy seed upon the ground"

This is regarding masturbation, of which people a long, long time ago looked
upon as something nasty, evil and destructive to a persons life.

Let's examine the evidence:

I have masturbated since I was a kid, and I enjoyed it then and I enjoy it
now.
>From what I can read on the web, other people masturbate and they enjoy it
as well.
My penis have never fallen off due to this activity.
When I don't masturbate, my body will eventually ejaculate the seamen while
I'm sleeping.

So this is evidently a false and incorrect moral value.

Religions, especially those based upon Abraham, have a lot of false moral
values, which are bad. Let's not discuss how many people have been killed
over all those false moral values that are preached by religion.

Consistency is very important in morality, and the in-consistency in the
morals preached by religions are many. That's how they have justified
killing millions, even though it clearly says: You shall not kill and
neither steal.

One example of in-consistency from the Qur'an: "*I will cast terror into the
hearts of those who disbelieve. Therefore strike off their heads and strike
off every fingertip of them*"

So correct and true moral values has apply to all human beings, there cannot
be any values which applies only to rich people, poor people, Iraqis, Jews,
Christians, Africans, police officers or soldiers. If it is wrong for
someone to shoot and kill another person in USA, then it's wrong to shoot
and kill another person if you are a soldier in Afghanistan.

Religion has plenty of good moral values, they where created
in ancient societies and helped us live better together.

Religion is founded on the utter submission to one or more deities and
throwing a personal rationality out the window.

Religion is about faith, founded on irrational thoughts and ideas. You can't
prove a religious faith, yet I consider there to be a lot of evidence in the
world which tells us where religion came from and how it came about, which
for me are clear indications against religion.

On Transhumanism I think outsiders sometimes considers it/us as religious
people, that we replace Transhumanism with other religions. I clearly don't
consider it in such a manner, self-improvement is a great moral value. It
will give me more energy, it involves improving my own knowledge, and give
myself better health. All of which my family and friends have great benefits
from.

I hope I made myself understood, I'm not the worlds greatest debater and
English is not my native language. Thanks for your attention and time!

- Sondre

2011/1/7 Natasha Vita-More <natasha at natasha.cc>

>   Sondre wrote:
>
> " No religion are sane. Religions are invalid as basis for morality, as
> the morality in all religions are not based upon realities in the world and
> doesn't stand up to scientific scrutiny. "
>
> I disagree.  Some religions offer a cultural perspective of a tribe's
> history and mythic lore.  And many contain moral views, which are deeply
> based on the real world.  It would be difficult to say whether they stand up
> to scientific scrutiny, but it would be difficult to say that transhumanism
> stands up to scientific scrutiny,  or cyberculture,  or feminism, etc.
>
>  " Religions is the mechanism of which to get people to submit their lives
> to rude and evil beings, of which then the leaders of each religion can
> manipulate their masses at will. "
>
> All religions?  All leaders of religions?  All masses?
>
>  " Yet you are right, it's not far fetched that religious individuals can
> believe anything, even in evolution. Believing has nothing to do
> with understandability, truth and right. "
>
> Believing does involve understandability, truth and right.
>
> Many religions offer a elements of good judgment, however based on myth.
>
> Natasha
>
> 2011/1/7 Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com>
>
>>
>>
>>
>> There are many many flavors of Christian - some are actually pretty sane.
>>  :)   Mainstream Christianity for a while was denatured of all that biblical
>> literalism and thought many things were mostly symbolic, for instance.  Then
>> we got the fundamentalist resurgence - in my opinion partially as reaction
>> to Future Shock.
>>
>> If you hold that it is possible within the laws of physics of this
>> universe to run multiple virtual universes then you believe in principle
>> that it is possible for an entire universe to have a creator.   You also
>> believe in principle that things that apparently violate the physics of such
>> a virtual universe can be done by those controlling the simulating
>> machinery.  And of course you believe that genetic algorithms could be used
>> to develop beings of all kinds tuned to parts of this virtual universe.
>>  So yeah,  a Christian that understands and affirms evolution is not that
>> far fetched.
>>
>> - samantha
>>
>>
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-- 
 Sondre Bjellås | Senior Solutions Architect | Steria
http://www.sondreb.com/
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