All of you are wrong about religion 😜

ur losing ur mind along with your hair, aren't you?

I know.
We all are.

But it still makes lives easier and for some - more meaningful. So as long as religion brings out the best in people, I don't mind us being a little wrong.

No harm is done. Only good. As long as it's so - let it be

[medievals excluded]

Which religion?

@netikras I honestly believe that every religion (Christianity included) is bad for people.

At best, their lifes are more difficult than it should be because their mental model of the world differs greatly from the actual world. So they pray the whole day and of course it has 0 effect, so it’s a waste of time.

At worst, they start hurting other people in the name if their gods and slow the progress of science with their ridiculous non-scientific views.
Look at how much influence religion has on politics. It’s not as harmless as some people think.

@Lensflare

> So they pray the whole day and of course it has 0 effect

That is not true. IMO prayers are not requests for a miracle. I see them more of a way to cope with problems mentally, to give the poor soul some slack time hoping things will fix themselves automatically if they say the right magic words, and while waiting -- try and do smth to change the situation for the better. In a way, it's a way to motivate people to stand up off their butts, quit whining and start do smth *hoping* the Big Boss will help them. They don't need that help. They only need to go and do it. And a bit of motivation.

> slow the progress of science with their ridiculous non-scientific views

To this day Science has NOT denied "the creation". Science is more practical, yes, but religions _might_ be closer to the truth than you think.

> Look at how much influence religion has on politics

And how much influence Modern Science has? Any less?

How much influence MS has on economics?

@Lensflare Most people need to know why they are doing things. What are they living for. Why did they appear on this world and what are they supposed to do. If left unguided, they often go the wrong ways: narco, crimes, abuse, suicide, etc.

When guided and given an "explanation of everything" they start making sense of it all and operating systematically, less impulsively. Whether the "system" is a good or a bad one is determined by the "explanation" and "motivation", i.e. the teachings of the religion.

ModernScience hasn't given them a reason to live and behave. MS even does worse: it says "you are a consequence of a random accident, you're but a spec and you mean nothing. You can be an amoeba and do what you like until your life ends". MS reduces the meaning of one's life and the consequences of his/he actions to nothing.

@Lensflare

For many years I've been an MS person and very sceptic about religion. Lately - not so much. I feel like MS tries to reverse-engineer smth that's been created by forces remotely defined by religion. So I am willing to admit that both actually make sense to some degree.

Why did the BigBang happen? And what was there before it?

"In the beginning there was nothing"

Sounds familiar?

And then there was light, right? a BANG with unimaginable velocities, temperatures and all sorts of particles emerging and annihilating each other in chaos. But it was LIGHT. The creation.

This keeps troubling me: the Bible is older than the BigBang theory. Yet it contains info that MS is considering to be in fact true.

Perhaps not all the events written there happened there exactly as written, but I'm starting to believe that at least some of it is actually true. Probably >50%

@netikras praying is not a motivation to actually do something. It’s the opposite. Instead of actually doing something, you pray and hope that something will change without the need for you to do anything.

Science doesn’t give any guidance or answers to the meaning of live. It makes it very clear that such questions is not the domain of science.
What you describe is the interpretation from religious people who fail to find meaning in life without someone or something (a holy book) telling them exactly what they should do and what they should think.

The claim that without religion there would be no morality is also a common myth that is persistently being spread by theologists despite the fact that it is clearly wrong.

@netikras about the big bang:
There is so much crap in the bible that contradicts with what people (and even most religious people) accept as true today.
By sheer chance, of course there will be some things that are somewhat similar to what we know today (big bang). It’s again the interpretation and selective perception that leads people to believe that the bible has actually some truth in it.

…

…

Science searches for how the world works. It doesn’t include the "why". We can and we do speculate of course. But we do that outside of science. In that sense, science doesn’t contradict religion. It doesn’t even ask the same questions.
Religious people should stop thinking about science and religion as contradicting world views. Science is not a world view.

This misunderstanding alone is a testament of the harm that religion does to people.
It forces them into a state of cognitive dissonance when faced with seemingly contradictory things and then construct some answer which doesn’t have to do anything with reality.

@Lensflare

> Religious people should stop thinking about science and religion as contradicting world views. Science is not a world view.

>

> This misunderstanding alone is a testament of the harm that religion does to people.

And if you

s/science/Religion/gi

s/religion/ModernScience/g

doesn't that also hold true? :)

@netikras what’s that supposed to mean? Is it regex? I don’t speak regex. :)
I’ll just assume that you mean to swap science with religion in my last comment…

Nope. Doesn’t hold true anymore.

@Lensflare yes, a regex replacement syntax. You got it right.

While I believe it's incorrect, I understand and appreciate your opinion. I believe religion and science are like engineering and politics. Neither is the "the only true" view of the world we live in, and they both are required, even though Camp Eng and Camp Pol believe they are the center of the world and the other one is but an unimportant "game"

@netikras the role that religion served in the past was very useful. It is one of the great unifying stories of humanity, like money, and national identity. Through a common story that a lot of people believed in, cooperation en masse was possible. It also served as a way to cope with a scary world full of unknown things that killed humans easily.

Nowadays, I’d argue it causes more division than unification, and most of the things it attempted to explain are better served by other areas of our culture. The only role it still has is one of consolation, which can also be served by something else like philosophy. We are terrified of death, tragedy, and uncertainty. And our only solace is thinking that perhaps there is something good after death, or a meaning to our suffering, or that we live to fulfill a greater role. The alternative is too cruel.

In my opinion, you don’t need religion for consolation. But it certainly sweetens the blows we’ll all receive.

Just think about dc and marvel comics written 2000 years ago and we will be praying to thor superman etc…

And the science will validate will more than 50 percent all the things says in dc/marvel is possible

I can give examples like simpsons cartoon that’s predict future events
Interstellar movie showing black hole before its captured etc……

any one can predict future easily like tommorow it will rain.

Saying where ,what time ,how long its impossible.

Yup