Topic: Thoughts on religion for a Sunday morning - page 5. (Read 3189 times)

How can you force people to replace their belief with another belief? By eliminating them?

The problem with that is that some people don't WANT to be educated. Because it's painful, especially when they find out that everything they thought they knew is wrong.

Couldn't agree more...

The only way to defeat superstition is a well educated population, when the only use for religion is ritual, it's pretty harmless.

It's not that people take religion very seriously, it's that religion is reality in their minds. Things can be very real in the minds of people, but be completely absent in the universe itself or in the minds of others. As to what it means to believe, it is exactly that - but I find often people put in their own interpretations which are not communicated trough religious texts.

People take their religion very seriously but seldom are capable of following the rules and regulations of the belief. Many are willing to die for it rather than live by it. Most man made religions are profoundly silly such as Christianity and Islam. The human ability to believe in the preposterous is unlimited and unfathomable. The more obviously ridiculous it is the more followers it attracts. Before you enter a house of worship you really have to lock your intellect up in a drawer and not retrieve it until your worship is over. Religion and intellect are not and will never be compatible.

This doesn't mean that theists are stupid only that it is necessary to not think about what they claim to believe. This is where it all becomes a house of cards. Remove one by thinking about it and the whole concept may collapse. Many people are in constant fear about losing their religion which is why some of them get very angry when its discussed.

Much of religion is based on fear. Fear of death, fear of judgement, fear of hell or some other punishment. The common expression "He is a God fearing man" sums it up well. Fear God if you know what's good for you. Religion chains you to the ground when the human spirit naturally wants to soar. Religion really has very little to do with the concept of "God". If God exists I doubt if he would have anything to do with any of these man made conceits known as the religions of the world. He would be well above such things.