Feeling that we need religion seems to me to indicate a deep mistrust of humanity, which is quite shocking.

Would it not be time and energy better spent in deciding to not be one of those bad apples as opposed to railing against others reactions to the reality that they do in fact exist in freakishly large numbers.. ??

Christians are not exhorted that it is their duty to convert others and to regard those who do not follow their religion as being "sinners".
"Brethren, if any of you do err from the truth, and one convert him, let him know, that he which converteth the sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death, and shall hide a multitude of sins." --James 5:19, 20.

I don't see this at all in religion. Some religious people are loving, respectful and tolerant and some are not. The same applies to non-religious people. Jesus's message was one of love, but religion itself does not seem to be about following Jesus's message (or any similar) but about identifying oneself with a group which includes some people and excludes others.

For a time I was good friends with an Islamic Kashmiri man.

Jesus may have taught love and tolerance but the religious leaders certainly do not and so, religion as it exists in our society (as opposed to on paper) is not something that promotes love and tolerance. It seems to promote war by giving people reasons to hate and to justify hating each other. Maybe they'd find other reasons if religion were not there but that doesn't make it any better.

The assumption that people need religion in order to know right from wrong is one that is very frightening, in my opinion. It also explains how easily people are brainwashed into committing horrific acts -- they are eager to suspend their own judgement and feeling and abdicate their own responsibility and freedom of choice and act as a puppet -- religion encourages this way of being and so through the voices of religious leaders, religion tells people not to love but to fight, to defend their faith, their deity, to not tolerate the filthy sinners who do not believe but to seek to eliminate them... Religion is a deeply scary and powerful meme set that is being exploited in ways that are really not good. If you love humanity, surely you'd trust it to be loving and good without the brainwashing of threats and rewards that religion involve. Feeling that we need religion seems to me to indicate a deep mistrust of humanity, which is quite shocking.

There is much to be feared from organisations, but the British Government has done some awful things, like testing Mustard Gas on British soldiers. If you fear any organisation, the organisation you fear, is not religion. It is the one that rules you. The Government, and its ability to use science, money and power to do awful things without conscience, because it is assumed that it will help the people and "the ends justify the means". I suggest that fear be directed where it belongs, a lot closer to home. That way, you can tackle the real threat, and remove it. The concept that it is OK to definitely seriously hurt a few, to possibly help many.

I understand that the experiences of your story hurt you. It was painful. But I read of a thread on POF about honour killings by Muslims which has been reported quite often in the media. I fully expected everyone on to blame the religion of Islam. But they didn't. They all just said that it was just done by a Pakistani family, and that is culture of many Pakistanis to react in this way.

Many religious leaders do promote love and tolerance, but not the ones who get printed. Why? Because the media is there to make money, and it is believed that people only want to read about bad things, like intolerance and hate, and don't want to read about good things, like tolerance and love.

Put the blame where it is due. The Bible is a book. Religion is at most a philosophy. The source of people's actions is themselves. To claim anything else, is to claim that others are not capable of controlling their own actions.

If Atheists feel animosity to religion, it is the animosity that each one of us feels to people who are different.

Some different people will hurt us. But if we blame all because of some, if we blame everyone, we will only end up with our own self-fulfilling prophecy. But if we get our emotions under our control, and tackle the real problems in our society, we can better the lives for everyone. Human psychology is our friend. Let us use it to help us, not hurt us.

I suggest that you read my post addressed to rune3. You might realise what I am saying.

If Atheists feel animosity to religion, it is the animosity that each one of us feels to people who are different.

Some different people will hurt us. But if we blame all because of some, if we blame everyone, we will only end up with our own self-fulfilling prophecy. But if we get our emotions under our control, and tackle the real problems in our society, we can better the lives for everyone. Human psychology is our friend. Let us use it to help us, not hurt us.

Though I don't call myself an Atheist, I may as well be one for the sake of this thread. The presumption of "need" is what is particularly insulting, intolerant, and disrespectful. No love there.

Judaism says "Love one another". Jesus says "turn the other cheek. It seems to me that most religions seem to be about love, respect and tolerance. So surely most atheists should love religion, even if they don't want it for themselves?

you are tarring ALL religions and all religious people with the same brush, and as I have posted before, I have met many people who are not like that. How is this fair to them?

...do what I think is right, then G-d will get on with me

When did your ancestors first discover the world was not flat?

But even that hasn't put them in a good mood.

Creation:...

My experience: Finally, as a forgiven sinner, I testify to an imperfect yet growing sense of God's peace, presence, and provision since receiving Christ more than a quarter-century ago. Despite occasional setbacks, my faith has deepened and strengthened, whatever life brings.

And that includes the angry rantings of atheists.

Creation: The universe, far from being a howling wasteland indifferent to our existence, appears to be finely tuned through its estimated 13.7 billion years of existence to support life on this planet. Tinker with any one of scores of fundamental physical laws or the initial conditions of the universe—such as gravity or the cosmological constant—and we would not be here. As physicist Paul Davies has admitted, "I have come to believe more and more strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as a brute fact."

Beauty: Beethoven's Ninth, a snowflake, the sweet smell of a baby who has been sleeping, and a sunset beyond the dunes of Lake Michigan all point to a magnificent and loving Creator. And isn't it interesting that we have the capacity—unlike mere animals—to gape in awe, to be brought to tears, before them? Truly did David say, "What is man, that you are mindful of him?"

Scripture: Unlike other religious texts, the Bible gives us the good, the bad, and the ugly of its heroes: Abraham, Jacob, David, and Peter among them. Further, Scripture's message rings true. It has been said that human depravity is the only religious doctrine empirically verified on a daily basis. And the Bible's gracious solution to our predicament, Christ's atoning death on the Cross, uniquely emphasizes what God has done, not what we must do, for our rescue.

Jesus: Christ's life and teachings are unparalleled in world history, as any Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim—or atheist—worth his salt will admit. Napoleon reportedly said, "I know men, and I tell you that Jesus Christ is not a man. Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires and the gods of other religions. That resemblance does not exist. There is between Christianity and whatever other religions the distance of infinity."

The trilemma: C.S. Lewis, commenting on Christ's claim to divinity, said: "You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to."

Resurrection: After the crucifixion, Jesus' tomb was found empty. His formerly despondent disciples then turned the Roman world upside down with the message that Christ had conquered death. And they were willing to die for it. The best explanation, according to N. T. Wright and other scholars, is that Christ rose from the dead.

Testimonies: While many Christians have behaved badly, Christ specializes in turning sinners around. What other faith can boast of a Chuck Colson? A John Newton? A William Wilberforce? Then there are the innumerable soup kitchens, universities, hospitals, and orphanages founded to the glory of Christ. While many atheists are moral, how many such institutions has the atheistic ideal—uncoerced by Communism, which is itself a perversion of Christianity—produced?

My experience: Finally, as a forgiven sinner, I testify to an imperfect yet growing sense of God's peace, presence, and provision since receiving Christ more than a quarter-century ago. Despite occasional setbacks, my faith has deepened and strengthened, whatever life brings.

From a POF POV (point of view), the non-religious outnumber those who claimed a type of Christianity by nearly 2:1.

From a POF POV (point of view), the non-religious outnumber those who claimed a type of Christianity by nearly 2:1.

I haven't studied the differences in views of anti-theists and atheists, and I'm not a seasoned or passionate debater, either. The Op Ed spoke to me, particularly the experience of peace, presence, and provision. Forgiveness--I'm still working on that.

I question these statistics.

From a POF POV (point of view), the non-religious outnumber those who claimed a type of Christianity by nearly 2:1Granted, it's a rough estimate (my unscientific poll of non-religious vs the collection of Christian flavors (other being one) on POF within a 50 mile radius of the middle of my state in the 30 to 35 age group.

As for the discussion about Science, I think it's appropriate because so many who espouse Atheism say they do so because "science" has the answers and "religion" doesn't, and they most often do so in order to proclaim the superiority of Atheism over religion. it seems to me that if a person is stating that their "Truth" is truer, and offering "science" in support, "science' should be discussed. Of course most are rather poor "sicentists" no matter what they think themselves to be. That's what I really enjoyed about scorpionmover's posts. And look at the Peanut Gallery responses -- it's too long. But not, It's non-fact or illogical. What's that about?

Because what something "says" it's supposed to be is often not the case in practise:

Democratic governments are FULL of people who say one thing and do another.

Religion = doubt is not welcome, skepicism is not a player, democracy is not an option, adjustment isn't part of the process, and the religion does not leave the scene when it's followers fail to live up to its "promises". Those in governance are accountable to the people, those in religion don't have to answer to any but their personal deity.

The current president said that Jesus was his favorite philosopher.

Jesus's message was one of love, but religion itself does not seem to be about following Jesus's message (or any similar) but about identifying oneself with a group which includes some people and excludes others.

Christians are exhorted that it is their duty to convert others and to regard those who do not follow their religion as being "sinners".

religion as it exists in our society (as opposed to on paper) is not something that promotes love and tolerance. It seems to promote war by giving people reasons to hate and to justify hating each other. Maybe they'd find other reasons if religion were not there but that doesn't make it any better.

Religion is a deeply scary and powerful meme set that is being exploited in ways that are really not good.

(my unscientific poll of non-religious vs the collection of Christian flavors (other being one) on POF

It's not the organisations themselves that I fear, it is the power that people allow them to have over them, the way they lead to a reduction in personal responsibility.

I felt aggravated that such blatant racism was considered ok -- my friend was vey quick to cry "racism" if anyone white was unhelpful towards him, but it's okay in the UK for ethnic minorities to be racist against white English people.

You can say "it's just Kashmiri culture" all you like, but it was not said to him "this is not honourable for your family" or "this is not customary" but more directly that it was against the will of Allah.

The people who get into powerful positions don't tend to get there by being tolerant and loving, however.

People who have been brainwashed into believing that there is a deity who will punish them if they do not unquestioningly obey the rules laid down by him and communicated though the religious leaders are not free.

Beliefs designed and intentionally programmed into us from childhood, that teach us it is wrong to question -- these are the most powerful and restricting of all.

I definitely do feel animosity towards religion when it holds people back or leads them to believe that they should be cruel or should go to war because their leaders say god tells them to. This is religion at work -- you may say it is religion being abused, but never the less, it is the tool being used.

It's not about religious people hurting atheists, it's about the imposition wholesale of a belief-system taking away from humanity, limiting its capacity for goodness, supporting its capacity for separatist thinking and through the brainwashing effect of meme sets that removes people's freedom and feeling of personal responsibility: it's the way in which religion is currently realised in the real world today, rather than in the ivory tower of idealism.

and through the brainwashing effect of meme sets that removes people's freedom and feeling of personal responsibility

god, atheism all of that is not so important. What is important is how it affects the quality of our togetherness as human beings and so far its not looking so good is it.

Religious people try to put the ball in non religious people court so to say, making religion seem like the norm and there fore we need to defend, be something were not.

Its the actions of followers of a religion, not the tenets of the religion itself, that affect us.

Also, shall I cite the biblical endorsements of slavery, rape, murder for you? I don't love such things.

For example, every buddhist I ever met is a wonderful, accepting, caring person.

Many other religions are less accepting of those with different beliefs, sexual preference, culture, etc and I tend not to love religions who tend to be less accepting of the differences of others.

You tend to tar groups with a large brush as well. You often cite examples of a member or members of a group - such as scientists, politicians, atheists - then attribute negative attributes towards them ( such as arrogance, dishonesty, greed)

Your debating tactics are intelligent and subtle in their deceit...perhaps you should try politics yourself.

Westboro church does what they think is right too.

Probably when they noticed the earth's round shadow pass over the moon during an eclipse. In early times it would have been dangerous to discuss it openly however as it ran contrary to the bible.

The modern belief that especially medieval Christianity believed in a flat earth has been referred to as The Myth of the Flat Earth. In 1945, it was listed by the Historical Association (of Britain) as the second of 20 in a pamphlet on common errors in history. Several scholars have argued that "with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat" and that the prevailing view was of a spherical earth. Jeffrey Russell states that the modern view that people of the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat is said to have entered the popular imagination in the 19th century, thanks largely to the publication of Washington Irving's fantasy The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus in 1828.

The 19th century was a period in which the perception of an antagonism between religion and science was especially strong. The disputes surrounding the Darwinian revolution contributed to the birth of the conflict thesis, a view of history according to which any interaction between religion and science almost inevitably would lead to open hostility, with religion usually taking the part of the aggressor against new scientific ideas. During this time, the conception of a European "Dark Age" gave much more prominence to the Flat Earth model than it ever possessed historically.

The first accounts of the legend were traced to the 1830s. In 1828 Washington Irving wrote the work of historical fiction The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. The book was confused by many as providing an actual historical account of Columbus' life. As a recourse to make his romance more compelling, Irving "...invented the indelible picture of the young Columbus, a 'simple mariner,' appearing before a dark crowd of benighted inquisitors and hooded theologians at a council of Salamanca, all of whom believed, according to Irving, that the earth was flat like a plate." There was indeed a meeting in Salamanca, but Irving's account for what happened there was entirely fictional.

A few years later, in 1834, Antoine-Jean Letronne, a French academic of strong antireligious ideas, misrepresented the church fathers and their medieval successors as believing in a flat earth, in his On the Cosmographical Ideas of the Church Fathers. Then, In 1837, the English philosopher of science William Whewell first identified, in his History of the Inductive Sciences, two minimally significant characters named Lactantius (245-325, also mocked by Copernicus' in De revolutionibus of 1543, as someone who speaks quite childishly about the Earth's shape, when he mocks those who declared that the Earth has the form of a globe) and Cosmas Indicopleustes, who wrote his "Christian Topography” in 547-549. Whewell pointed to them as evidence of a medieval belief in a Flat Earth, and other historians quickly followed him, even though it was hard to find other examples.

The widely circulated woodcut of a man poking his head through the firmament of a flat Earth to view the mechanics of the spheres, executed in the style of the 16th century cannot be traced to an earlier source than Camille Flammarion's L'Atmosphère: Météorologie Populaire (Paris, 1888, p. 163). The woodcut illustrates the statement in the text that a medieval missionary claimed that "he reached the horizon where the Earth and the heavens met", an anecdote that may be traced back to Voltaire, but not to any known medieval source. In its original form, the woodcut included a decorative border that places it in the 19th century; in later publications, some claiming that the woodcut did, in fact, date to the 16th century, the border was removed. Flammarion, according to anecdotal evidence, had commissioned the Flammarion woodcut himself. In any case, no source of the image earlier than Flammarion's book is known.

In Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians, Jeffrey Russell (professor of history at University of California, Santa Barbara) claims that the Flat Earth theory is a fable used to impugn pre-modern civilization, especially that of the Middle Ages in Europe.

The popularized version of the misconception that people before the age of exploration believed that Earth was flat persists in the popular imagination, and is even repeated in some widely read textbooks. Previous editions of Thomas Bailey's The American Pageant stated that "The superstitious sailors [of Columbas' crew] ... grew increasingly mutinous...because they were fearful of sailing over the edge of the world"; however, no such historical account is known. Actually, sailors were probably among the first to know of the curvature of Earth from daily observations — seeing how shore landscape features (or masts of other ships) gradually descend/ascend near the horizon.

I now know that much of what I was told was lies, and that I must question everything I have learned, even if this is a gradual process, and what I was taught by my teachers and society is just as flawed as what my parents have told me. The question is: do you believe the people who told you things as a child, or the people who told other children things that were just as untrue, but you only met as an adult? Or do you learn to question everyone, and validate everything for yourself, never assuming that just because someone claims to know the truth, and wears a special coat of white, that he is right?

"Experience is, for me, the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience. No other person's ideas, and none of my own ideas, are as authoritative as my experience. It is to experience that I must return again and again, to discover a closer approximation to truth as it is in the process of becoming in me. Neither the Bible nor the prophets -- neither Freud nor research --neither the revelations of God nor man -- can take precedence over my own direct experience. My experience is not authoritative because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction."

What is important is how it affects the quality of our togetherness as human beings

I don't think it's so much that its "a lie" exactly that anyone tells us, so much as it being simply one fragment, one perception that omits others: what they can see from their perspective.

It is not my experience of religion that it encourages its followers to question, but my direct experience of different religions is very limited.

Neither the Bible nor the prophets -- neither Freud nor research --neither the revelations of God nor man -- can take precedence over my own direct experience.

My experience is not authoritative because it is infallible. It is the basis of authority because it can always be checked in new primary ways. In this way its frequent error or fallibility is always open to correction.

At the end of the day, we will never know/experience anything outside of belief and perception, however strong our convictions and so I think the real question is less to do with what is true and more to do with what is constructive, positive, practical, helpful...