Okay forgiven but what I am getting at is what Paul preached. Which is saved in Christ and Christ resurrected..I don't know what socio-economic conditions have to do with being saved but i have done my research. I used to live with a pagan so I was exposed to the occult and pagan religions. I also had a background in the abrahamic religions, hinduism as well as buddhism, zen buddhism, kundalini yoga, i mean really esoteric stuff..babylonian, enki and enlil kind of stuff..and also i was around people who welcomed evil spirits in their lives..and they would meet these spirits in the astral plane by engaging in astral travel..i knew someone who could do it at will..its all very interesting seeming but it is straight from hell..it's all for evil, this is how people get misled in the pagan world, some spirit makes them think they are spiritually powerful so they become arrogant and think they are above God. Which is what the devil thinks, coincidently. God has never disappointed me or let me down..I trust in Him and His holy name. That's my point. I don't know how you could really define my views..according to my experience I was elected by God..God is entirely real to me, if I said He wasn't I would be a liar. So I witness to that and to the gospel as the word of the living God. What would you call that? And no I am not a pretriest..Christ has yet to come again..

>> ^enoch:
@<A rel="nofollow" class=profilelink title="member since January 21st, 2011" href="http://videosift.com/member/shinyblurry">shinyblurry
i just read your recent post.
well thought out and i agree with the points pertaining to the differences between jesus and the other myriad of resurrection deities.
i dont know why that post didnt appear when i first came to this thread.
maybe it was during the time of me writing my previous post.please forgive.
that was very well done.
that is precisely the difference and also how i too..resolved that issue.
i thank you for your answer.

hmmmm..
i disagree with your statement that only the monotheistic religion control by fear.
buddhism (yes..buddhism) shinto,mayan,toltec,arminianism,zoroastriasm..the list is legion and they ALL have punishment/reward doctrine.each at varying degrees but its in there.

i do enjoy hearing an atheists perspective on how my faith translates.
very..analytical of you my friend.
suffice to say my faith is born from personal revelation and has been an ongoing revelation since i was 14.
nothing i have encountered or experienced has taken away from this revelation,in fact it has strengthened it.
could i be delusional?
i guess its possible.
or maybe it is you who are delusional and i see things as they actually are.
not trying to be an ass,just pointing out the subjective nature of this particular polemic.

i guess..in its most simplest of terms.
my faith is that i have a spirit,a soul,a divine spark that is connected to the ALL,the ONE,also known as "the source".
freud believed that the ego WAS who you were.i could not disagree with that more.
the ego is who you THINK you are.predicated and perpetrated by those who are close to you.
we cant help that.it is very human.
so around 12 yrs old we start to have a sense of self.this self understands the world and how he/she interacts with it by rules set by his/her parents.
as we grow older so does the circle of influence i.e:friends,lovers,teachers etc etc.
think about this for a second because i am expressing a very huge idea in a very short amount of time and glossing over all the implications of said idea.

my philosophy..or my faith if you will,views the ego as my "false" self.
the ego wishes only to validate itself (thats why mass marketing is very VERY effective).
the ego wishes to perpetuate its own existence by way of constant feed-back.
the ego gets jealous and possesive.
the ego gets insecure and needy.
the ego has demands...and desires...which seek only for self aggrandizement.
now societal roles consisting of compassion and empathy will,and can,curb the destructive nature of the ego (think your teenage years and just how self centered you were to give you an idea of ego gone wild)

through my faith and discipline i am quite aware of my ego and have suppressed it to the point where it no longer manipulates my thinking nor my emotions.
so i have no urge nor a desire to be perceived as "correct" because to me that is irrelevant.
(though i do prefer to be "corrected" if i misstate something).
i do not experience jealousy,nor envy.
but i do experience pride.
i do not allow anothers limited perception of me based on their own subjective reasoning influence how i feel about who i am.
i am open and honest because my faith is that we are all connected with the divine and to lie,steal or cheat you is to be doing to myself also.
i do not judge anothers faith or lack of it because that is THEIR path and the only time i ever feel the need to intercede is when it flows into my domain and affects me in some way.

even as i write these words,which to me seem pretty articulate and clear,i know that you will understand them based solely on..well..your understanding.
i do not say that as a slight but rather a statement.
trying to convey complex thought patterns by way of text can be so..limiting.

everything i do or say i do so with spirit in mind.
sometimes i fail..sometimes i succeed.
i am human.
with a spirit! ziiiiing!
anyways..
i really do enjoy our conversations.
you are a pleasure my friend.
namaste.
(look that word up btw..its a great word)

Not that I believe in souls, but this seems to be more of an argument against a particular interpretation of how souls work (i.e. the Judeo-Christian version). Many sects of Buddhism for instance don't posit that you will remember anything or retain any part of yourself after death. For them, the only thing that gets carried over is your karma. Again, not saying I believe that, but this argument doesn't really disprove that view of the soul.

No violence/fear/worship, etc. if we don't teach it? ... I find 90% of this video absurd and delusional, and the other 10% ripped from Buddhism and Communism.

Accidents happen! Anger is natural! Empathy is not equally distributed in all people! People desire, and have various levels of greed and selfishness! etc.

Beyond a Borg-like, distributed collective consciousness, I can see no possible way that humans will ever "overcome" the concept of organizing themselves into societies in which certain people play certain roles, both in private/commercial/industrial and communal/societal/governmental ways. And @vaporlock brings up the excellent point that once completely unshackled the greed of anonymous private industry investors WOULD essentially be the new government. To go totally dystopian on you, what would stop wars being fought between Walmart-Blackwater LLC and Exxon-Aegis Defense Services Inc. for your city and its resources?


Anti-Statism, just another religion?

@bmacs27 That's his interpretation, but one that is difficult to prove wrong. The only way to empirically test it would be to go back in time and try both ways (praying and not praying) and recording the results. If we could do that the case would be settled, I suppose.

@criticalthud That's actually many sects of Buddhism's view.

@dystopianfuturetoday I've read the study. That article you cited is incredibly misleading. The researchers involved in the study say the result regarding complications is likely a chance finding due to the numbers (59% prayed for getting complications and 51% un-prayed for getting complications) being so close. In other words, in a repeated study with a larger sample size they expected it to be even. See the NY Times article as a reference.

One possibility the researchers cited is that people who've been told strangers are praying for them think maybe their condition might be worse than the doctors are telling them (thus leading them to freak out a bit and impede their own recovery). That wouldn't be evidence of prayer causing damage, though (a conclusion which by the way actually implicitly suggests prayer works--just not in the manner people think), and the researchers specifically stated (see the NY Times article) that you can't use the results to draw any conclusions about people who ask to be prayed for or prayer offered among family members and friends since the study was only concerned with praying for strangers.

And finally, that study treats prayer as if it is a "wish machine" (see my comments to raverman). It starts with the assumption that everyone who gets prayed for has their prayer answered in the affirmative and in exactly the way they phrase it--which isn't how any of the major religions defines prayer, as far as I know.

It would be really interesting to search through the results of that study and look at the outliers, in my opinion. Were there differences in the number of people who made unexpected recoveries in the groups? How about the opposite--unexpected deaths? I don't know if they kept such information. But even if they did I don't see how they could link these things to supernatural effects one way or the other. The way the study is designed, there doesn't seem to be a way to separate supernatural effects from chance natural effects.

Just to make it clear, I'm not a theist in any way, shape, or form. I'm just pointing out the difficulties in studying supposedly supernatural events "scientifically." I personally don't think either side can prove their case using science although that certainly hasn't stopped people from trying. My view on prayer is that it could help (people feel better knowing someone is praying for them), it could do nothing, or it could be harmful (parents decide not to take their child to the doctor and leave it in "God's hands")... it really depends on the circumstances. However, I think that most of the time for the overwhelming majority of people in the world, prayer is beneficial, for probably the same reasons that Wiseman (see previous comment) found for people who feel they are lucky. That doesn't mean prayer has a supernatural basis. But it also does suggest that prayer is neither pointless nor meaningless.

Very well said. I like that he implies (though he never explicitly states) that not everyone who is religious necessarily subscribes to this style of thinking, and that the problems associated with this this style of thinking are by no means unique only to religion.

I would disagree with him on some minor points. I would also point out to him (were I ever to meet him) that his interpretation is very Western in its analysis. Here in Japan, the parent-child relationship has a whole other range of dynamics from the ones he described in this video. And while most of what he says applies strongly to Christianity and somewhat to Judaism or Islam, I find the argument less compelling for other religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism.

Wall of text warning. No tl;dr. Learn to read dammit (see what I did there?).

@quantumushroom

Unusual post from you there qm. But again you miss the point (what did you expect?).

First off, religion necessarily has an effect on society otherwise no one would care if you adhered or not (i.e. there would be no religious wars, no religious-based hatred etc.). The problem is not that religion enhances your sense of well-being, it's that as a consequence (or side effect if you will) you close yourself off from people of a different religion and from contrary opinions on many different matters: you trade freedom of thought for psychological safety and by doing that you deserve neither. Now, if you're a "religious scientist" type then your either not really religious or not really a scientist. Compartmentalization can only get you so far.

Second, wtf does any of this has to do with liberalism? Your tangent does not intersect my argument at any point. I bet you can't derive for shit. Do you even know what derivation is?

Third, atheism is neutral. Atheism is to theism as amoralism is to moralism. The antonym to moral is not amoral but immoral. In the same way, the antonym to theism is non-theism. A non-theist can be religious, he simply does not believe in a deity or deities. Atheism was a term invented by theists to vilify non-theist and polytheists. It has been adopted by non-religious people like "nigger" has been adopted by African-Americans, as a way of empowerment. It encompasses many views, most of them non-religious. It does not mean atheists cannot suffer from the same delusions as religious people, only that they are less likely because by identifying and refusing to accept the kind of bad thinking that goes on in religious circles, they have inoculated themselves to a point.

Fourth, on the contrary one could say that there have never been a religion without a state. Every religion needs a vector of power to affirm its authority and convert others. The Jews in Pharaonic Egypt formed a state within a state, electing their own leaders and applying the laws of Abraham to their brethren, much like Muslims try to do in western countries by following sharia law and even trying to make it official. I would go so far as to say that religion is the prototype of the state. Look at Buddhism. Not a year after the Buddha died and already sects formed and tried to control the movement he started. The conflicts may not have been overtly violent, but they were power struggles and as such quite far from the detachment from worldly matters taught by the Buddha. All prophets are dictators. Their intentions may be good, but it will always turn sour when they're gone as they, and not their god or teachings, are really what unify their followers. The continuation depends not on the person or the teachings but on the institutions that they or their successors build, just like a state. You could see what I mean if you had read the Leviathan of Hobbes (that's not what he says, but the parallels he makes and his insistence that religion is necessary for the state's well-being goes in this direction). This, to me, argues for anarchism but of course with people like quantumushroom - not to mention the potential for greed and cruelty still in all of us - I would have to say we are not ripe for it just yet. It may well be that a great part of the population will need to be forced to become atheists just to live among an atheist society comfortably, like atheists were once forced to recant their views in religious societies. While it would mean some psychological violence, as long as we stay in a democratic state it would not do more damage than what religion does now and I believe it would benefit humankind in the long run.

@Gallowflak

Nowhere did I say atheists were more rational than the religious. In fact, most rationalists (like Descartes) are religious for various reasons, one which I will explore below. I said that atheists are more reasonable and detached in their understanding of the world. Now, while "reasonable" comes from "reason" it does not mean here that a reasonable person uses more reason than another. It means that a person is more sensible than another. For example, there are no empirically verifiable evidence of a god or gods. Any religious person not mentally ill will agree. They may argue for the acceptance of anecdotal evidence or of natural phenomena as "acts of God", but just saying something doesn't make it so and anecdotal evidence is not verifiable/repeatable by a third-party and thus of very little value. So there doesn't seem to be any evidence for deities, even Pascal admitted that fact in the frickin 17th century, that's why he had to make a wager with non-believers: he tried to say that by betting on an infinite reward you cannot lose (many think that Pascal says the odds are infinite, but that would be empirical. Pascal says that since god is presumably infinite, and that you presumably gain this infinity when you die, you should take the bet since by doing so you lose nothing in this life. Of course the last part I think is false, also the dying part. Only the "god is infinite" has any kind of weight and it is very light). Of course he didn't really understand mathematical infinity and thus didn't realize that doing so meant you only had an infinitesimal chance of winning in return.

Digression aside, this means that the natural state of a rational being would be non-theistic. Only non-rational belief (based on logical fallacies or the sentiment of faith) or logical arguments based on non-empirical premises can lead to the existence of a god as part of one's thinking. Thus, while not necessarily non-rational, religious thinking most of the time is. In other cases, when dubious premises are used, we would say that the conclusions are not reasonable, meaning that they do not agree with our raw, unfiltered experiences of the world. This is exactly why many religious persons and theists resort to rationalism, as it lets them bypass primary experience in order to define god a priori as the creator of our experiences by some logical argument with dubious premises. Of course this comes from an empiric viewpoint, but then again rationalists don't have a monopoly on reason even though they let us empiricists have a monopoly on experience: that's where the Kantians enter, but that's a story for another time I'm afraid.

thinker247 wroted:

I was with you on the first two sentences. It's not capitalism that causes trampling of fellow humans for a deal on electronics. It's primal urge and a little too much enthusiasm.

It's a failure of self-control, which either wasn't taught well or even at all. But humans are first and foremost dangerous animals with a thin veneer of "reason". The stores can certainly share some of the blame by not being prepared, or caring.

How is morality brought into this?

Considerate people would not trample others for a damned stereo. We would be more forgiving if this was a video of people fighting over food or water, but not much.

If we all went to church on Sunday and paid our taxes on time and tipped our hats to passing lady folk, would that prevent the actions of this video?

To a certain extent, yes. The practicing of consideration would be more ingrained. But an anonymous mob?

And by the way, we don't all believe that all values are equally valid.

Yeah, I didn't mean that as a sweeping statement, even though it was a sweeping statement.

Murder would always be wrong to me, even if every blue-blood Democrat told me it was okay. I also try not to judge people before judging myself, but not because a deity told me this in a book. A good idea is a good idea, regardless of who started it.

Maybe you should look into Buddhism. Older than Christianity, and no deities.

I'd like to create a world in which everyone gets along, no matter what the voices in their head and in their literature tell them.

It won't happen, but it's a nice idea.

May Dog bless you this fine Kwanzaa season, QM.

Dog has been somewhat lacking of late, but I takes what I can gets. May Joyous Kwanzannukah befall you as well.

@berticus I believe he's referring to Eastern philosophies (in particular Buddhism) that have been saying this for thousands of years.

This talk was awesome. She's got it spot-on I think--if we could raise a whole generation of kids that believed from the start that it's okay to be vulnerable (even with no guarantees that the world will be kind in return), that we should be grateful for every moment (even the terrifying ones), and that all of us are "good enough" to be loved just by virtue of being human beings, we'd see a peaceful revolution take place around the world and real change, rather than superficial change, take place in our social and political structures.

>> ^berticus:

what on earth are you talking about?
1) psychological science is relatively new, 19th C onward.
2) the 'third wave' were interested in humanistic topics just like this.
3) there are vast literatures on all kinds of topics of emotion, love, attachment, belonging...
i don't know why you think psychology is some kinda bad guy, it's just bizarre. and aren't you the same person who is into freud / jung? it just boggles my mind.
i mean no disrespect, it is just thoroughly confusing.

Still wrong, still going strong eh...

"The foundations of Buddhist tradition and practice are the Three Jewels: the Buddha, the Dharma (the teachings), and the Sangha (the community)."-wiki

Buddhists have belief. That you don't understand what they believe, or how they believe it, means nothing.

>> ^quantumushroom:
"There is a sufficient belief in a supreme being or entity to constitute a religion for the purposes of charity law," declared the Charity Commission for England and Wales in response to the Druid Network's application.
By that definition, Buddhism is not a religion, because it has no god.
Now, for no reason at all, here's Twinkie Henge.

"There is a sufficient belief in a supreme being or entity to constitute a religion for the purposes of charity law," declared the Charity Commission for England and Wales in response to the Druid Network's application.

By that definition, Buddhism is not a religion, because it has no god.

Now, for no reason at all, here's Twinkie Henge.

>> ^Yogi:
Like I said in the preview of this Documentary, what has Scientology done that we should care about? I see here some people not seeing their relatives through...choices of their own. And a woman committing suicide...again a choice of her own. Really I can't find any proof that Scientology is responsible for any deaths whatsoever. So why should I care? Let them worship whatever they want with their stupid "All psychiatrists are evil" nonsense, it doesn't matter. Now back to my Sammich.


It appears to all who are reading your post that you have not had any direct contact with someone who has been affected by any cult (let alone scientology), and therefore do not care in the slightest. Having read your replies to the responses that informed you of entirely valid answers to your original question I can see that you prefer to remain ignorant. That's fine by me matey, it's your choice to remain ignorant!

I used to think the ICOC was one of the worst cults because of their tactics of disconnection (similar to the disconnection practices of Scientology and is exercised early on so that the only people a victim is in contact with are also members of the cult thereby ensuring that complete social disconnection can be enforced should the victim ever become non-compliant) and their requirement of regular tithe payments once they've successfully cut you off from people who aren't members of the cult. These last few years the practices of Scientology make the ICOC look reasonable in contrast.

If you're unwilling to acknowledge that what scientology has been doing is extremely damaging to individuals and much more so than accepted religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and so on then you are deliberately shielding yourself from the media. Wait, that's what scientologists do isn't it? Better be careful there mate, you wouldn't want to be mistaken for a scientologist!

I think our main disagreement is really about what religion is, ie how to define it, And I'm struggling to get my view across. Are you familiar with the expression/story "Nail soup" Its a common folk-tale from I think sweden, and it concerns a homeless man/wanderer and a woman. Basically, the wanderer is looking for food and a place to sleep, and he convinces the woman to give him a place to sleep, but she says she doesnt have any food. But then the guy explains that he can cook world class soup on nothing but a rusty old nail. Naturally, the woman is skeptical, but agrees to let the man try, so he boils up some water and tosses the nail in. "Its really getting tasty now, he says, and if only.. well, I shouldnt say.." "No, go on", says the woman, now getting interested "Well.." he says "..its just that a pinch of salt would really do the trick, but its not strictly needed" so the woman gives him some salt, and then he keeps talking, and eventually they put in pepper, carrots, mushrooms, some leftover meat, and so on,(none of them actually needed, he explains) and it ends up being a really good soup, and the woman, of course, having been completely duped, breaks out the finest brew to go with it and impressedly exclaims "And all that on a nail!, Amazing!"

I think religion is a bit like that nail. If you take an average Christian, lets say, their lives, their morality, their views on sexuality, human rights, equality,community, world affair and whatnot is almost entirely free of influence from anything in the bible, but they will nevertheless THINK they've been informed by the bible and their religion, just like the woman who think shes eating soup cooked on nothing but a nail. But of course, its not the nail that makes the soup great. In fact, it would probably be better without it, and yet the nail gets all the credit. Thats how I view religion. Like a rusty nail, it really has nothing to offer in the "soup of wisdom", we have vastly superior methods of gathering information and making judgements about the world. To the degree that religion CAN influence your decision-making process, it would have to, by definition, be something unique to the respective religion. And whats unique about a 2-4000 year old attempt at philosophy? Well, for starters we know that the people who wrote it knew next to nothing about the world they lived in. They were primitive, frightened, superstitious peasants who thought the gods would punish them for being naughty in bed, who thought the creator of the universe cared which kind of bipedal ape should live in Israel, and that they had to cut of their foreskins to prove that they were from the right tribe.

This is not a good source of wisdom, and if you REALLY base your morality or actions upon this earliest and worst attempt at philosophy, you could just as well feed your family on nothing but nails.

EDIT 24.08.10:
So what I'm really saying is that i honestly dont think religion has any good to offer. And even if it does( as with certain quotes by jesus, certain aspects of Buddhism and so on) I , as an atheist, have no trouble just stealing those good ideas, not because they are or are not part of a religion, but because they are good ideas. I dont need to think Jesus is the son of God anymore than i have to think Einstein was the son of God to think that their ideas are brilliant. So whats left of religion? well its the empty shell of superstitious, unverifiable,highly improbable noise that we call dogma, and thats the part that go haywire, because it makes ridiculous and untrue claims about the world, and that makes people make bad decisions . If you really think, say that the "prophet" Muhammed had personal contact with the creator of the universe, as is the assumed belief of all proper muslims, what room is there realistically left for doubt and interpretation? why should you then be critical of any of the actions or claims that the prophet has made? This is precisely whats wrong with religion, it places an invisible barrier between certain claims and our duty to be critical and skeptical towards them, some religions more than others, and some forms of religion more than others, but basically thats what it does. By calling texts and scripture "holy", criticism is forbidden either directly and by force by some ruling authority, or, more commonly, but just as disturbingly, by people engaging in self-censorship of their mind, a kind of thoughtcrime mindset.

Glad to hear everything's okay in RL!

So, to answer your first question, yes, I have read the Bible and many Buddhist sutras (particularly the Lotus Sutra). I'm familiar with some parts of the Koran, but have not read it in its entirety. What knowledge I have of Hinduism comes from Hindu friends.

Your interpretation of these religious texts is that they promote an obedience to a God or gods. For sure the Buddhist sutras do not, as most sects of Buddhism do not believe in sentient gods per se but in an innate (non-sentient) life force that we all share. But leaving that issue aside, I don't see how you can't have both themes (love thy neighbor/obey god). You couched it as an "either/or" solution, but why does it have to be? There's no logical reason why you can't follow your individual deity and treat other humans with compassion and respect. In fact, in most cases the themes go together--by treating other people with compassion and respect you are following the commands of your deity.

But let's take it further than that. I'm just going to quote you here: Of course you dont have to [interpret the Bible that way], and most religious people dont, read or interpret it that way. Wouldn't you agree that if most people don't interpret the Bible as a form of control, then really your interpretation is not the representative of Christian belief? For certain some people do interpret those religious texts as you have-- fundamentalists, for instance. But I would hardly consider them the majority of religious people or the average representative of religion. In short, just because you’ve interpreted a particular religious text in a particular way, it doesn’t mean your interpretation is by any means “correct” or mainstream.

On a side note, I agree with you that there's a lot of f'd up stuff in many religious texts. Take the Old Testament for example and the bloodshed and wars described within it. However, we’re looking at religion as a whole--not just superficially at the religious text but how that text is interpreted and how the people who follow that religion conduct themselves in daily life. One problem with this, as I mentioned in the last post, is that the most vocal nutcases are usually the ones that you see in the media and not your "average" religious person, so it is easy to form a biased perception of virtually all religions if you’re not associating with members of that particular religion on a daily basis. If you ask the majority of Christians what the major theme of the Bible is, you’ll almost certainly get some answer regarding love and redemption—not your interpretation or violence and control.

To address your second question about empirical evidence about the benefits of religious belief--there's lots. I don't have time now to find all the links. You’ll just have to Google it. I've seen the studies--legit ones on both physical and psychological health published in JAMA and other peer-reviewed sources--and they were enough to convince me. Very few counter-examples have been published with the exception of a recent one in 2010 that showed a correlation between religious belief and obesity, but it was such a small sample size that it could have been a chance finding or attributable to other factors (it drew its participants predominately from African-American /Hispanic communities which typically have worse health-care access than other ethnic groups).

Frankly, I’m a bit surprised at your next argument about MLK. You seem to be stating that it wasn’t MLK’s religious beliefs that prompted him to take action. All I need to do to refute this is point you to any biography of the man or his numerous speeches where he clearly states that his religious beliefs have led him to believe in both the moral imperatives of equality for all people and non-violence as a means of achieving this. Was religion the thing that made him what he was? Absolutely. Same with Ghandi. And Mother Theresa. And the Dalai Lama. And a host of other people who have attempted to or succeeded in changing the world for the better.

Next, let’s talk about the Hitchen’s challenge. I find the challenge ridiculous. Why should religion have to be somehow separate from daily life? All religions are deeply concerned with secular life—with how we live and act. Furthermore basic psychology tells us we don’t act because of any one reason but due to a complex interaction of many reasons, some of which are conscious and some unconscious, and which in the end are in our own self-interest. Hitchen’s challenge is a straw-man argument—replace religion with some other construct such as democracy or music and you will be equally unable to find anyone who meets that challenge (by promoting democracy you protect your own rights; musicians may love music but even they need to sell songs in order to pay the rent and will compose for money).

I think equally ridiculous is the argument that things such as genital mutilation have no other possible explanation or cause than religion. Wouldn’t misogyny be a much better and more rational explanation than religion? Clearly religion is used to fuel the misogyny but it would certainly be a mistake to assume that the misogyny couldn’t exist without religion. Let’s take another example—the Spanish Inquisition. The cause of that tragic slaughter was clearly secular in nature—having finally wrested the southern part of the country from Muslim rule, Ferdinand and Isabella chose Catholicism to unify a country in which many different religions co-existed. In short, religion didn’t cause the Spanish Inquisition; plain old political power-struggles did. Religion was simply the vehicle through which it was carried out.

And this is really what I’ve been saying all along—that religion is not, as you keep painting it as, the cause of humanity’s problems. It is a tool—a tool that, can be used for great good or great evil. As the folks at religioustolerance.org state: “Religion has the capability to generate unselfish love in some people, and vicious, raw hatred in others. The trick is to somehow change religions so that they maximize the former and minimize the latter.”

Later on, they go on to state that they feel that religion overall has a positive effect on society. That pretty much sums up my view of religion. If you do away with religion, you throw out the baby with the bath water. You lose the Martin Luther King Jr.’s, the Ghandi’s, the Mother Teresea’s, the Dali Lama’s of the world. It’s too a high a price to pay. For me, it’s all about dialogue—talking with others, getting them to see the common ground we all share, respect each other, and, as they said on their website maximizing the good and eliminating the bad.

As long as we keep talking—as you and I have been doing through these threads--we will keep moving forward. But I believe the instant dialogue ends—the instant you demonize the” other” and refuse to engage with them--you’ve planted the seeds of the next conflict: the next Spanish Inquisition, the next Bosnian massacre, or the next 9/11.

Krishnamurti was paraphrasing the Simile of the Raft from the Pali Canon, Theravadin Buddhism; Alagaddupama Sutta, MN 22: http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/mn/mn.022.than.html