The Real Cost Of Religious Faith - Atheist Experience

[Osweo]

Islam built nothing, but plundered everything.

Christianity's civilisation was a reworking of the pre-existent Roman, infused with a new barbarian spirit that would doubtless have expressed itself in another, but equally impressive, way, had Christianity not happened to have won out in the late Empire.

As for the video, I find it embarrassing to watch clever atheists arguing against the stupider sort of Christian. Why don't they ask some proper theologian to come on the show? Might be worthwhile then.

[Jägerstaffel]

As for the video, I find it embarrassing to watch clever atheists arguing against the stupider sort of Christian. Why don't they ask some proper theologian to come on the show? Might be worthwhile then.

I don't get the point of debate, really. All the information is out there already. Anyone has enough to make an educated decision. What a monumental waste of time.

[Osweo]

I don't get the point of debate, really. All the information is out there already. Anyone has enough to make an educated decision. What a monumental waste of time.

Nah, there's always new people popping up who need to be introduced to things.

[Magister Eckhart]

And how much death and suffering have religious conflicts caused over the centuries? I'd say it's almost certainly quite a bit more. What happened in Cambodia was essentially a result of a self-destructive mass psychosis.

The point is that, despite the claims from atheists and their ilk, there is no necessary relationship between religious faith and human brutality. This is proven by the terrible brutality and massive acts of genocide committed by areligious, atheistic governments like the Khmer Rouge and Stalinist USSR. The only thing atheism serves to do is completely demolish what little preventative morality remains (thanks solely to religion) between human beings and their most animalistic and violent inclinations.

Islam built nothing, but plundered everything.

Is that religion, or just Arabs?

As for the video, I find it embarrassing to watch clever atheists arguing against the stupider sort of Christian. Why don't they ask some proper theologian to come on the show? Might be worthwhile then.

Because atheism cannot actually triumph against anything but straw-men. No truly intelligent person can accept atheism, especially not on such weak grounds as "religion causes violence".

[Thorum]

@ Wagner: What were your thoughts of the video? What did they mean by "the real cost of religious faith?" Did you agree with the caller?

[Magister Eckhart]

@ Wagner: What were your thoughts of the video? What did they mean by "the real cost of religious faith?" Did you agree with the caller?

I remember having a discussion with a close friend of mine in undergrad about how it was possible for both John Henry Cardinal Newman and Pat Robertson to technically be the same religion. We drew the conclusion that Christians, and religious people in general, fall into two categories: unthinking, unintelligent, uneducated plebeians who are afraid of reason and education because it can damage their faith and thinking, intelligent, rational scholars who crave reason and education because it strengthens their faith. We continued this discussion until she proposed to me a line of thinking that I had never thought of before and that I came to adopt whole-heartedly after our discussion.

There is in fact a hierarchy in terms of religious development and religious faith. There are three levels of this development, and therefore three kinds of people:

1. Less Intelligent and Uneducated Persons who take religion at face value and believe based entirely on the authority of mythos. They are blind believers and by and large might be called mystics.
2. Less or More Intelligent and Educated Persons who realise that there is no rational basis for blind belief in the authority of the mythos and therefore become atheists. They are also blind believers, but are entirely exoteric.
3. Intelligent and Educated Persons who realise that the real basis of religion is not manifested in the authority of the mythos but in the relationship between the mortal and the divine, and examine their faith through rational means to conclude that the existence of the divine and its relationship to man is confirmed by human reason but most richly expressed through faith. These are the only truly religious people, whose faith is a balance among three axes: mystic faith, authoritative tradition, and human philosophy.

Ultimately, all intelligent people go through a phase of major doubt that can either lead them temporarily toward atheism or toward agnosticism, depending on the person. Many of these people actually end up as deists, just one step away from embracing a religious tradition. The people, however, who get stuck in the rut of atheism, though they have stepped further than the born slaves and peasant-believers, are still inferior to those who can see the connection between human reason and divine revelation, and is not dependent on one or the other singularly.

The caller, therefore, falls into category 1, and is the most common person for any given atheist to argue with publicly because, frankly, they are not intelligent enough to use reason to support their faith. They are truly born slaves, whose only purpose is to serve.

The hosts, however, fall into category 2, and as said above display their own lack of wisdom as well as their dishonesty by choosing a medium that purposely attracts Cat. 1 believers like moths to a flame, thus exploiting the public forum to create their own cult of personality in challenge to religion. One might compare these to the wily merchant, the man who is educated enough to exploit weakness and achieve worldly success, but lacks the ability to enrich himself spiritually.

One rarely encounters anyone of the 3rd category anywhere, especially in this medium. Most often they are either too wise to involve themselves in such a vulgar arena or engaged as theologians who do not have the time to involve themselves in the same. These, I believe, are in fact synonymous with the highest naturally-born caste of man, the scholar-priest or priest-king.

Of course my own belief in the natural castes of man influence the above description, but I find upon omitting all reference to hierarchy and caste, it still holds true that there are these three basic approaches to religion, and everything is merely a variation on those rules. In a world without religion, there will still be natural-born slaves who cling to authority and a minority of truly intelligent people who cannot help but be naturally moral and rational, and in between them will be, for lack of a better term, the Machiavellians: smart enough to exploit, but not intelligent enough to build.

The "real cost of religion" is defined by these hosts only in reference to blind believers, and as such what it actually is for them is irrelevant: it is an argument that cannot stand unless applied against the lowest and most inferior sort of mind. The only reason it, along with most atheist doctrine, has become broadly accepted is because recognition of inferiority has itself become taboo (which leftists and atheists, greatly aided by the levelling of society and the reign of mediocrity, actively exploit). Nietzsche accurately says that the drive of these men is a Will to Overpower that is embodied in a Will to Equality because their natural inferiority does not give them the ability to truly overpower without first bringing the naturally superior down to their own level.

[Agrippa]

@Wagnerian: This is not related to religion specifically, it is true for all kinds of beliefs. Even science.

I mean you can tell someone something about the complexity of evolution or the human organism and all he gets might be some "sound" in which he believes or not, while he doesn't even grasp the most basic aspects of this truths.

There is always a difference in niveau, in all aspects and respects.

But the problem is, with religion, religion gives even the dumbest individuals "authority", if they just preach what is "written" in the mind of the morons. So they can destroy higher humans and people than they are, by just having the legitimation based on old scriptures they probably even don't understand.

This is the huge difference between European Christianity and what Calvinist sects made out of it. Look at the Catholics, they at least have their structures and niveau, some obviously superiour people - even if many of them fail this or that way - can rule out the most absurd and destructive ideas of a religion bound to the scriptures.

Yet what do you see in the USA and among sects? The most stupid ideas, made up by morons and fanatics for morons and fanatics being believed LITERALLY and being spread, making up pressure on better and finally higher standing people.

While I don't like what Christianity made out of certain aspects of European culture and moral in general, what Calvinists did, especially those sects with their "lay preachers" is just horrible.

Christianity was ruined from the moment the bible was translated, yet that was a good step and at least the Counter Reformation, Anglicans and Lutherans made something out of it which became, on the longer, acceptable for further higher development.

But this sects which still believe in the literal meaning of the bible are just moronic fanatics, worse than many Catholic and Lutheran preachers living more than 100 years ago.

And I think, in the end, this video and comments are PRIMARILY directed against this sect like fanatics which really see other people as "godless" and "Satanic", just because they might be more enlightened, being on a higher intellectual and psychological level than they are. They are like the peasants with nothing in their head which would even burn a writer or scientist like Kopernikus, just to keep up their delusion.

They are the ones truly tearing down higher values with their uneducated beliefs, which are a disgrace even for most of European Christianity.

As you cannot let the lowest elements judge about anything, the least they can judge is science, higher moral and religion. But that is what this sects transferred to some of the lowest elements in the European descended world.

Especially some of the Evangelicals and charismatic groups foster psychotic beliefs and behaviour. Some of those force their own children to experience "god" by bringing them under tremendous pressure to have "epiphanies".

[Osweo]

They are truly born slaves, whose only purpose is to serve.

You're disgusting. The most objectionable thing an ideology can do, is to establish rigid categories to impede the personal development of those who happen to fall under its sway. If you label people as 'born slaves', you run a high chance of misidentifying many who would otherwise have progressed into a more aware human being and been of use to his group in furthering its material circumstances or sense of itself.

More importantly, you damage the chance of those with potential who happen to be born into a family of what had appeared to be mere 'born slaves'. How many of your very own ancestors would have fallen under this term? Had the category been forceful in legal or social terms, how less likely would it have been that you would have emerged from them, to enjoy the liberty of thinking of yourself in such absurdly vain ways as you do? If you had been in charge a hundred years ago, chances are that you would have damned your own ancestors to lower caste servitude.

I was reading this today in that Baker book I recommended to you;
On Africa;

A remarkable feature of slavery was its acceptance, in certain cases by those who were subjected to it. Du Chaillu records that some of the Ovaherero (Damara) 'court slavery. You engage one of them as a servant, and you find that he considers himself your property. . . . They have no independence about them. . . . They seem to be made for slavery, and naturally fall into its ways.' There is strong contrast here with certain other ethnic taxa of man, such as the Sanids, whom it has been found almost impossible to enslave.

Can you honestly apply that sort of thing to those members of your own ethnic group that you have just so easily dismissed as 'born slaves'? Would they not rather have rebelled and struggled for their freedom, despite their lack of spiritual giftedness that you have chosen to take as the means of defining their total being?

Your spiritually simple were not 'born to serve'. They were born to live, to perpetuate the system they were born in, to defend it and on occasion to produce chance offspring that MAY be objectively regarded as 'superior' to them in some ways, but who nevertheless owe them their very existence.

[Adalwolf]

As for the video, I find it embarrassing to watch clever atheists arguing against the stupider sort of Christian.

That's the whole point of their show. Debate an unintelligent Christian to make atheism look better. I recommend people watch serious discussions between creationists and evolutionist scholars. And you will see how the enlightened Christian side prevails every time.

[Debaser11]

That's the whole point of their show. Debate an unintelligent Christian to make atheism look better. I recommend people watch serious discussions between creationists and evolutionist scholars. And you will see how the enlightened Christian side prevails every time.

This is what an intelligent debate on the subject sounds like.
It is the most intelligent argument an atheist (Russell) has from what I've seen and while Copleston is by far a wiser man than I could probably hope to be, his decision to get hung up on the language of casuality makes his side seem more discredited than it actually is.

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What Russell (a man whom I also respect to some degree) does here is basically deny the legitmacy of questions that religion seeks to address by its nature. He claims there is no legitmacy concerning questions about God only by refusing to acknowledge the nature and character most religious people ascribe to such a God. He comes out looking like the winner. And indeed, he does make some good points. He seems to think truth only lies in the material.

But he only comes out looking like the winner by refusing to have the discussion. It would be like if I were scheduled to play a tennis match with someone and the person said that having a match is an illegitimate indicator for knowing who was truly the better player and thus refused to play.