I don't take offense, such things are not personal to me. I just happen to troll bad sifts sometimes.

In any case, like I said, I have a standard for quality of factual accuracy and logic, regardless of whether the actual video is science or not. This sift didn't make the cut. I haven't watched the Hitchens video.

In reply to this comment by BicycleRepairMan:
With regards to my previous message, I was merely explaining my position and reasoning, please don't take it the wrong way, and I understand why you don' want to waste any more time or effort on this issue.

It is difficult to determine what is appropriate for any given channel, I run the debunked channel, and I'd hate to turn it into a political channel, for instance, but then again , where to draw the line, and why? Take, for instance the new Portal 2 trailer, Portal is a game that plays with science and experiments, but really, it doesnt have anything to do with actual science. In the recent Hitchens video "it does not follow" Hitchens talks about scientific discoveries to be sure, but is it science or an opinion-piece?

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Thanks for the doublepromote!

In reply to this comment by BicycleRepairMan:
*doublepromote

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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.

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Hey again! First off, thanks so much for taking the time to reply even though things are busy for you in RL--I totally understand how that is and hope everything is going fine.

Reading over your post, it occurred to me that there are actually some things we agree on. One thing, for instance, that I think we agree on is that dogma is very, very bad. Blindly following others is never going to lead to a good situation. Forcing others to do things "because that's the way we've always done it" is unlikely to give good results either.

Since I'm pretty sure we agree on this point, let's turn to the point we disagree on. As you said, "does religion bring the good stuff?" The answer to this question I think comes partly from how we're defining religion. If we're going to define religion very narrowly as dogma--a set of prescriptive rules about behavior and practice that everyone must follow--then clearly we answered the question in the last paragraph. Dogma isn't going to bring the good stuff, no. I'm absolutely with you on that.

However, I find such a definition of religion (i.e. religion = dogma) exceedingly narrow and frankly unrealistic. When you look at churches, or temples, or synagogues, or covens, or whatever you see that religion is much more than a set of prescribed rules. All religions are composed of people, and these people interact in very complex ways with both each other, with the religion's leadership, and with whatever religious texts are used. Religion to me, then, is a complex socio-cultural phenomenon. Looking at most churches in the U.S., for example, I don't see a lot of people blindly following the Bible, nor do I see the church leadership encouraging people to blindly follow the Bible (otherwise, I think the death rate from stonings in the U.S. would be much higher than it actually is). What I do see are people coming together to help themselves, help each other, and help their communities, using the Bible as a guide (note I said guide here--I know very few people who base their decisions solely on their religious text; also I chose Christianity for this example, but really you could substitute the religion of your choice there).

Based on these observations, I'm therefore going to quote Daisaku Ikeda, a prominent Buddhist leader. He once said, "Religion exists to serve people; people do not exist to serve religion." My definition of religion therefore is a set of practices that help us grow beyond our own selfish tendencies and serve a greater good. I personally find it irrelevant whether the practices are man-made or divinely inspired so long as they get people to behave more compassionately to each other. To me, that's religion. Anyone who is acting without compassion towards another human being is not following the teachings of their own religion. And any organization that preaches hatred or violence should not be considered a religion at all. If you look at the Bible, or the Koran, or the Buddhist sutras, the overarching message you see is one of love for fellow humankind: the Golden Rule. That is religion and that is what people should be practicing.

Clearly, therefore, I think proper religious practice does bring the good stuff. But can religious practice bring the bad stuff too? Yeah. I'm not denying that. When people choose not to think critically for themselves there will always be someone willing to come along and exploit them. I also think many religious organizations have organized themselves in such a way as to, as you said, be a drain on society and hide behind the banner of religion while carrying out atrocious crimes. But as I said above, I don't really consider the people doing those things as being religious or representing "religion" per se. And as we've talked about in previous posts, I don't think that the existence of such corrupt organizations are entirely religion's fault. If people weren't blindly following their preacher, they'd be blindly following the local village idiot, or blindly their President (or, as in the case of George W. Bush, both). My view on this is that power has a tendency to corrupt; that organizations (whether they be religions, corporations, or nation-states) have a tendency to demand blind obedience; and that there are many people who will willing close their eyes and follow others blindly in order to feel even the smallest sense of security.

In your post, you accused me of downplaying the bad stuff, but I'm going to turn that argument around and suggest that you are in fact downplaying the good stuff that religion has to offer. For every example that you might choose to offer, say the Inquisition or the 9/11 terror attacks, that supposedly show why religion needs to go I can offer you a historical counter-example like Martin Luther King, Jr. or Ghandi as to why religion is crucially important. I think such arguments based on history would end in a draw. But let's go beyond historical arguments. Let's talk about the effect of ordinary people's lives--getting people to donate to charity, volunteer in their communities, help and support each other. What about the drug addicts who find that religion gives them the strength they need to break their addiction, or the prisoners who use the support system religion affords to turn their lives around? Religion inspires ordinary people to lead better, more positive lives much more often than it inspires people to go out and, say, shoot abortion doctors. The problem is, the good stories are too mundane don't make the evening news, so mostly they are anecdotal. The empirical evidence we do have, though, shows religious people live longer, happier, and healthier lives overall.

Sorry for the long post. To sum things up, I do believe that the world needs more religion as I've defined it above. It sounds to me like your main problem with religion is in fact with organized religion and its tendency to steer towards dogma and blind obedience. I actually share your feelings to some extent--as I said above, if an organization is promoting intolerance or hatred, or is imposing its will by force then I think certainly it should be dealt with swiftly and critically. If there's one thing I hope you take away from our discussions on this topic, I suppose it is that religion as a concept is much larger than just organized religion; that it can be immensely healing and an immensely beneficial force in the world. And I would really hope that you would never dismiss someone's views because they happen to be religious. It seems to me that one of the biggest problems facing the world today is that people don't listen to each other--we don't even make the effort to see the other person's point of view.

I, for my part, throughout this dialogue have tried to put myself in your shoes and see things as you do. My goal is not to make you a "religious" person, but simply, I suppose, to further the dialogue a bit and even clarify my own thoughts on the matter by putting them down in words. Thanks for being a willing discussion partner in the process.

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