Religion is bullshit

[gran guerrero]

You're all a fucking joke

[gran guerrero]

lamente your sins in hell you infidel swines\

[kthx]

[kthx]

[kthx]

[Burnt]

Leave it up to people to make decisions for themselves and let them live in peace.

I'm all for letting people live in peace and that would be easier if the pope would stop saying stupid shit like this: http://www.newser.com/story/88730/po...dangerous.html

So his idiot followers stop doing things like this (the imprisoning not the pardoning): http://www.foxnews.com/world/2010/05...est=latestnews

"Results are based on a series of surveys based on telephone interviews with approximately 1,000 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted by Gallup"

What a viable method of determining what the entire country does and doesn't believe. Burnt you just keep on convincing me more and more how right you are!!!

That's how polls work, if you interview 1000 random people (or 3000 since it's 3 polls averaged) you can be almost certain (95% sure) that it's accurate within 2 or 3 percentage points. If you don't believe me just compare some exit polls for the states in the 2008 election:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/polls.main/

to the actual results:
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2008/results/president/

I have a very hard time believing that 31% of the population believe that. I know people from staunchly athiest to diehard religious, of all religions, and I don't know anyone who actually believes that.

You wouldn't know since people hardly talk about their religious beliefs, it's a taboo subject.
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[kthx]

[the_paul]

What I'm saying is generalizing results based on a tiny fraction of 1% of the population isn't always going to be right. Sometimes it might be, sure, but in this case I absolutely guarantee that its not. 31% beliieving that is absurdly high, and its not correct. The population of the United States is what, 305 million? 1000 is far too small of a sample size

EDIT from briefly searching found "results" that show that 16% of the usa believe in this. And "results" that show 60% believe in it. And everywhere in between. So excuse my skepticism

[kthx]

[Burnt]

What I'm saying is generalizing results based on a tiny fraction of 1% of the population isn't always going to be right. Sometimes it might be, sure, but in this case I absolutely guarantee that its not. 31% beliieving that is absurdly high, and its not correct. The population of the United States is what, 305 million? 1000 is far too small of a sample size

They probably don't actually believe or even know about all the idiotic things the bibles says but they just say they believe it. It's 3000 people like I said since it's three polls averaged, polling with that kind of sample size is mathematically proven to be relatively accurate, if you don't believe in math I don't know what else to say.

EDIT from briefly searching found "results" that show that 16% of the usa believe in this. And "results" that show 60% believe in it. And everywhere in between. So excuse my skepticism

No clue what you are referring to here.

[the_paul]

Really don't know a simpler way to put it burnt. I'll try to break it down even more.

I search for other polls like the one you did. I find some that say lower percentage. I find some that say higher percentage. Results were all over the place. I search for only little time. I not believe any results.

Better?

[Burnt]

Give link to other polls?

[the_paul]

Search yourself, easy to find. I'm at work and not going to bother doing it again

[Burnt]

I search for other polls like the one you did.

Just because they are similar if they have different choices you're going to get different results. The gallup one had three choices, literally true, inspired by the word of god, and ancient fables, history, legends recorded by man. This Rasmussen one had literally true, not true and not sure. Take out the inspired by word of god option and a lot more people are going to go with literally true. http://www.rasmussenreports.com/publ...nce_is_growing

Anyway you slice it religion can warp your thinking and make you believe things that are obviously not true.

[Tigron-X]

Why don't we just leave it up to people to decide for themselves?

I totally agree! Stop abusing kids by telling them lies and reinforcing such lies through rituals, verbal abuse, and even punitive action.

Some people get strength or other things from it, others don't and think it's nonsense. This discussion is the most futile and inane one that exists. Leave it up to people to make decisions for themselves and let them live in peace.

Yeah, some do rile up strength from it. But, people once believed in rain dancing too. Some once believed that if you ate the heart of another being you would gain that being's strengths. However, when one applies the scientific method, then one realizes it's all bullshit. i.e. It's tantamount to a placebo! However, the side effects to believing in such irrational dribble far out weigh any and all delusions of prosperity. And YES! They are delusions of prosperity!

Why would I give such nonsense any ground?

Either you want to live in reality or you don't.

Hypothetically speaking, if I find a people dancing for rain, and I know irrigation techniques, then I'm going to intervene.

This is your fucking intervention!

You want strength? You want peace? You want happiness? Then seek truth through means of empiricism -- use philosophy, use psychology, use biology and so on. The woes one experiences in this world are in direct correlation to one's environment and the relationships he/she has with others as well as his/her own MEcosystem.

When one prays, all he/she is doing is engaging his/her own MEcosystem. There's NO ONE there!

You have never heard from God! You have never had a 1-on-1 conversation with God! If you think you have, then PLEASE seek professional help!

So has land and money. Have you cut yourself off from them too? No? You still drive a car? Yeah? Eat shit hypocrite

You do realize that you just agreed to his point, right? I mean, all you're doing is pointing out another evil and using that to validate your own paradigm.

I'm sure you feel frustration, among other emotions, with all of this. It's hard to accept that something we've believed in for so long is actually a false doctrine. Many people have been indoctrinated. And, it's so hard to see how false the belief is when the many people around you believe in it so passionately. And, even more so if you grew up believing it. But, that's all that there is -- this passion that people have.

The hardest part is distinguishing reality from concepts. If I told you that forests aren't real, you would think I'm crazy unless you've studied philosophy. But, it's true. Forests are not real. The aggregates that we create in our minds are concepts. They're not part of reality. Try to cut down a forest without cutting down a single tree. You can't do it. What's real are the trees. The term "forest" is something we use to describe an aggregate of trees. You can't go up and touch a forest. But, you can go up to a tree and touch it, thus experience it empirically.

If God was real, then we could experience such a being empirically. If God has affect on this world in any way, shape or form, then we would be able to experience such a being empirically. Any experience one claims to have had with God is always conceptual, never real. i.e. It's an association that you develope in your own mind.