Athiests: Do You Hate Religion? (page 2)

betterdaze

religion with a little "r" — A humane system of beliefs that teaches kindness, fairness, nurturing and respect of individual self-reliance, joy in group problem-solving and creating a better quality of life in the here-and-now — no problem.

Religion with a big "R" — An authoritative control system that teaches guilt, legalism and divisive, clannish mistrust of outsiders, castigating those who do not comply with primitive myths or rely upon future fantasies — BIG PROBLEM!

~Sue

villabolo

Humanity has been inclined towards religion for tens of thousands of years. Those prehistoric cave paintings were religious, they worshiped nature.

Religion is just a way of explaining the world around you and your place in it. Unfortunately humanity degenerated when it became civilized and so did its religions.

I despise the current religions. Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism have nothing to do with the real world. A true religion celebrates the natural world and our place in it. Unfortunately the natural world no longer exists and we have to deal with these religions and their false promise of salvation from the miseries we have brought upon ourselves.

parakeet

I don't mind religion as long as they don't try to stuff their beliefs down my gullet, either directly or through legislation. If they stay in their yard, I'll stay in mine.

donny

I hate the enslavement to superstition and myth part of it and as some others have said, I don't hate religious people. I sometimes ponder how quickly I left the enslavement of the Society and became a non believer in anything related to the great belief systems of the world. It would take a great miracle or an undisbutable supernatural event to occur before I would ever consider looking at any religion.

Don

shamus100

The only religious person that I HATE is one that tries to cram it down my throat. That's because I used to be one of those assholes.

And I expect more from ex-dubs too. Most religious people here are extremely respectful, and downright really good people. I really do respect that.

As for organized religion, I feel bad throwing them all in together and generalizing them. It reminds me a lot of what hitler did to the Jews in WW2.

Just my opinion.

rebel8

I don't hate mainstream harmless religion. (It goes w/o saying how I feel about cults or any harmful religion.)

I think of the Pope like I think of Santa Claus. I don't believe in his magic, but sometimes it makes me smile to see a jolly old man in a costume saying "ho ho ho".

(I think most Americans feel the same way but still consider themselves members of churches anyway.)

undercover

I think of the Pope like I think of Santa Claus. I don't believe in his magic, but sometimes it makes me smile to see a jolly old man in a costume saying "ho ho ho".

Compare the number of people who died because of their refusal to accept Santa with the number of people who died due to their refusal to accept papal authority and you can see that even though neither has any more magic or spirit than the other, one has considerable more power to inflict damage and death.

MissingLink

I hate it the same way I hate physical slavery.

OnTheWayOut

I do hate religion, but not the people in it. It's not so simple to say that religion causes so many problems.
Religion is the cause of so many problems, but eliminate religion and people will fall back on Nationalism/Racism
and language barriers and will disagree on politics and they will have similar problems.

Religion diverts peoples' money and time, but without that diversion, who's to say what the people would do?
Maybe it would be worse if they didn't have the diversion.

We are slowly outgrowing our need for religion. Our descendants will laugh at what was believed, same way
we laugh at the Roman or Greek gods. "The Bible, HA HA. You mean that snake and the fruit story? You are
joking, right? People used to swallow that? The Flood? And the virgin birth? C'mon. It was clearly a combination of
mythologies designed to unite differing peoples. What a bunch of primitives we come from- a giant leap closer
to the apes."

WTWizard

This is how I used to feel about regular church:

On Sunday morning, we used to have to get dressed up, travel about 15 miles each way, and go to church. This started with Sunday school, of which I remember only the time they sung the opening portion of Ray Steven's Everything Is Beautiful. I remember nothing else about it--nor do I remember benefiting in any way from the main church. Three hours of fun time wasted, nothing learned that I could actually use. And I never felt upbuilt, even with Catholic church.

It is true that some atheists are capable of crimes against humanity, including supremist groups. However, most of the whoppers are committed in the name of God or Allah. Flying planes into buildings, driving car bombs into crowded night clubs, and blowing up subways during rush hour are Muslim acts. Christians are capable of going around the world to force everyone to become Christians or get killed, burning people at the stake for seeing lies in the Bible, and creating a political structure where everything anyone does is what they are told to do. There is no freedom within religion--often, civil wars are started because several different religious groups within one country are determined that everyone be forced into their group. This is also preventing peace in the middle East, and Christian denominations were responsible for a lot of the wars in Europe during the early 20th century, including both World Wars.

For me, I never felt upbuilt after going to church. For me, spiritual growth came out of my science books, and I had much more of an appetite for math and science than I ever did for God.

Athiests: Do You Hate Religion?

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