Chaingang
Posts: 1727
Joined: 10/24/2005
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"Religion does more harm than good - poll"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,,1978045,00.html
More people in Britain think religion causes harm than believe it does good, according to a Guardian/ICM poll published today. It shows that an overwhelming majority see religion as a cause of division and tension - greatly outnumbering the smaller majority who also believe that it can be a force for good.
The poll also reveals that non-believers outnumber believers in Britain by almost two to one. It paints a picture of a sceptical nation with massive doubts about the effect religion has on society: 82% of those questioned say they see religion as a cause of division and tension between people. Only 16% disagree. The findings are at odds with attempts by some religious leaders to define the country as one made up of many faith communities.
Most people have no personal faith, the poll shows, with only 33% of those questioned describing themselves as "a religious person". A clear majority, 63%, say that they are not religious - including more than half of those who describe themselves as Christian.
Older people and women are the most likely to believe in a god, with 37% of women saying they are religious, compared with 29% of men.
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"Judgment day"
http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,1878706,00.html
With his usual rational skills he sets about dissecting the arguments for the existence of a God. He takes on all comers: Aquinas's five "proofs", Pascal's wager (meant as a joke, surely), even Stephen Unwin's probability of God, whose use of Bayes' theorem to demonstrate the probability of God Dawkins scathingly dismisses as "quite agreeably funny". He puts in its place the believers' misunderstanding of Darwinism. No, it does not mean that we are all here by chance, but by a scientifically demonstrable process of natural selection. His scorn for believers is evident throughout. He speaks of "a mind hijacked by religion" and finds "sucking up to God" a strange rationale for doing good. He is, not surprisingly, appalled by the jealous rage of the God of the Old Testament (lovingly putting Abraham to the test of killing his only son) and has sharp things to say about the ubiquitous weirdness of the Bible, "a chaotically cobbled together anthology of disjointed documents". When sophisticated believers claim disarmingly that "we don't take Genesis literally any more," he rails "That is my whole point!" It's as much a pick-and-mix philosophy as believers accuse atheists of. What's more, plenty of people still do take the Bible literally. According to Gallup approximately 50% of the US electorate believe the story of Noah.
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The Root of All Evil?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Root_of_All_Evil%3F
2 x 45 minutes, streaming:
http://huderon.blogspot.com/2006/12/root-of-all-evil-by-richard-dawkins.html
2 x 45 minutes, MP4 downloads:
http://www.antonioedward.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,28/func,download/filecatid,50/chk,8b6cd88d1a76a25297a95b4ded6b4ccf/
http://www.antonioedward.net/component/option,com_remository/Itemid,28/func,download/filecatid,49/chk,6128ae8eb873f267791548fa6acc4619/
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"Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster"
http://www.venganza.org/
Comment: Be touched by His Noodley Appendage. A hilarious parody of religion.
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I no longer consider the belief in religious ideas a charming foible that can be overlooked or easily ignored. In many instances the belief in god leads people to dangerous, aggressive, and bigoted worldviews. The most strikingly obvious example of the madness inherent in religion is how the three Abrahamic or Mosaic faiths - Judaism, Christianity, and Islam - each consider the other two false or otherwise imperfect faiths. Rather than cooperating among themselves for a mutual purpose, the members of these various branches of the same original belief system are often literally at war with one another. The continuing strife in the Middle-East is a result of this religion-induced madness. People are literally goaded and deluded into warring with one another over conflicting god perceptions that have no basis in any kind of objective reality. There is nothing harmless about philosophies that teach people that believers are superior to others and that non-believers are inferior to them - that's the perfect recipe for endless conflict. Religions are also dangerous on a more individual basis as they often attempt to exert control over people by means of strict social controls like sexual guilt and by teaching obeisance to an imaginary being to whom one can only gain access through a set of religious leaders (most of whom simply want your money or to bugger the pick of your sons and daughters). Religions are themselves the source of much of the "evil" in the world.
Enough is enough. Religious views must be discouraged for the sake of humanity at large.
I wish us all peace on earth.
_____________________________
"Everything flows, nothing stands still." (Πάντα ῥεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει) - Heraclitus
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