I'm saying you are wasting your time because the very thing that needs to be changed is the person assessing the religion doctrine (or political ideology).

So long as humans exist there will be 'religions' because it's something a large majority of humans want - something or someone to love and worship.

In my case it's Kelly Brook. In the case of primitive man it was fire, the wind, thunder or anything which they knew existed but could not explain. At least they knew these things existed.

Man has now moved on to live in a little fairytale world of his own - and everyone can have his own fairytale by taking his pick of the hundreds of religions which exist. A sort of mix and match! But none of the main religions worship anything which actually exists - which makes me think that primitive man was far wiser than the leaders of our current main religions...unless, of course, they exist to make money. Heaven forfend!!

The point is that Man seems to want a god. So religions will always exist.

And thus it will always be. A desire fanned by theologians who are too lazy to get a 'proper' job and want to spend all their time 'thinking.'

That doesn't make much sense to me. You yourself are such a person assessing the religious doctrine or political ideology.

That's correct. The very thing that needs to be changed is the human being.

So I'm saying its a waste of time trying to find fault in religion, or creating new laws or thinking that politics will fix our problems or what have you. The problem is not some idea or something external out there in the environment.

The problem is within every single human being, it is the human being that needs to change, needs to be fixed. And it is from this starting point that we start our quest.

Let me put it this way. Lets just say religion is broken (or politics) like a machine and a human being comes along thinking he is going to fix it, but how can he when he himself is also broken?

You mean broken as in "prone to using cheap rhetorical questions"?

I'm sorry, but this is fluff. Try making an argument instead of poetry.

Well I'm not really making an argument just pointing out something we all already know that we have feelings that are destructive to ourselves and the environment. We feel disconnected and separate from the environment not realising we are also part of that environment, but what is needed is more than knowing that we are but also to feel that we are and feelings go beyond words because it is a direct experience one has.

You see I have always wondered about religion and even science. At the very least they are methods of trying to describe the world around us. If you picture a sphere hanging in air, on one side you have christianity, on another side islam, and on another side science, and on side philosophy, on the other side psychology etc etc etc...but not anyone of them can see the whole sphere. Science at the very least has understood to zoom in and out and tilt its head a little but still will never see the whole sphere.

So religion is trying to describe something. To put a feeling into words about the relationship between us and the environment. An experience that one has, a self realisation about who the self and the nature of things and what it's all about. Okay so here is the problem for a religious person "I have had an experience that I can not describe in words and any attempt falls short and gets misunderstood of what that actually experience was."

Science on the other hand takes it step by step by step cutting the world into smaller and smaller things as to understand them but by doing so can't grasp the bigger emotion feeling it has to the environment, the experience one has that a religious person has.

Because this experience comes out of the blue and can not be described in words or written in some math equation. I'm sure most of us has had this experience when we see birds in the sky or looking into stars at night or watching a lady bug crawl over the floor, or see a flower grow at the edge of the road.

Now I can describe to you in great detail the flower its shape, its colour, heck I can give you the name of the road and you can see it for yourself but you might not get the experience I had. And religion trys and fails miserably trying to describe this feeling and thus comes up crazy ideas like God, and methods of trying to get this experience. The more it does, the more the experience gets lost and in a never ending debate of trying to define words with words with words about something that can't be put into words.

Well, to me this sounds a lot better than your last post.

I understand the thing you write about separation, and I also know a lot of people feel that way and I doubt many people have not felt that at some point. As for the remainder of your post, you might be interested in Nagel's awesome 1974 essay "What is it like to be a bat?", and if you just want to read about it there is a nice wiki article on it.

However, I don't really agree with the underlying sentiment - that this is somehow problematic. Whilst we might not be able to find some buried ontological reality with sensory experience, we can still find something.

I'm not going to claim that I have some great perspective to everything, but it has been a long time since I have felt "separate" from the world. I have come to the view that what we call the "the world" is largely a place of creatures eating eachother, while floating on top op molten rock on a tiny crust of land surrounded by a leaking atmosphere and all this is revolving around a giant nuclear explosion. Which incidentally makes most of religion (and indeed politics) look rather humorous, but still in some weird sense makes sensation, perception and experience look rather beautiful. Maybe that makes no sense to anyone but me, but I can live with that.

Let me try and give you a flavour of the experience.

Lets talk about Free will/determinism for a second is the hair you grow something you do? or is it something that happens to you? It's the rain outside something you do or is it something that happens to you?

You might say "well I'm in control of this much, my legs, my arms etc...". Okay this feeling that some people have and I would dare say Jesus had it, is that it is a do-happening. This person is the whole dam universe, its his eyes that invoke light from the sky, its his ears that bring sound out from the world. He goes with this universe, like a back goes with a front, like white goes with black and the whole dam thing is suchness, the Tao, not one, not two, a box with everything in it but there are no edges to this box.

So here is the problem Jesus had "I have had an experience that I feel like I'm doing the whole thing, and its doing me, and both are happening at the same time, and I feel like....like God"

so he is using words that he finds in his social setting (the idea of god), its the nearest thing he has to describe this experience he had. And here is the good news you also can be like gods, you also can have this experience.

So this is the problem that jesus had I have a message I want to tell the world its the most amazing thing ever and I can't put into words.

I feel it is problematic if the human being feels alienated from his environment because he goes around destroying things that are not him and forces his will on the external world, trying to shape it how he likes it. Not knowing that the thing he is destroying is also himself.

What is needed is a spiritual path, an awakening, enlightenment, to be saved whatever you call it. It is the process of making the human being better, but is a process that has to happen all by itself and is something that can't be forced or willed or thought of an idea.

A change comes about when we stop thinking, but trying to stop thinking is also thinking.

So OP would Boko Haram have kidnapped innocent girls out of schools if Islam never existed? It sure would seem that would have to be your position after creating this thread.

In Mexico, children are at risk of getting kidnapped, this is a real threat that tourists and Mexicans alike face mostly due to a tough economic situation. Often, poor youngsters in Mexico will sign up for the drug cartels and will end up making far more then the adults who work regular jobs.

In Nigeria, some folks are so poor that they decide to join a group like Boko Haram, which includes mostly young men who are upset at their gov and a horrendous economic situation. This is often the case with folks who join Al Qaeda or the Taliban as well.

Or:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-13809501

How about this one:

That has absolutely NOTHING to do with being poor. It does have something to do with religion, absurd ancient ideologies and Islam, though.

Ah yes, killing police, politicians, and anyone who is critical of them, including other Muslims and Christians, and stealing other people's children and selling them. Obviously, this must all be the inevitable conclusion of not having enough money or food. This excuse has no bearing on reality and only was spoken to satisfy your agenda of liberal political correctness. It can't possibly have anything to do with ideology could it? No no, impossible, if we accepted that then someone's feelings might get hurt. Far better to perpetuate the cycle of illiterate and savage violence.

Funny how there are a lot of poor people in America who have managed to avoid the inevitability of their killing police and kidnapping other people's children. I wonder how they manage to do that. Could it be because they don't believe the Koran is the word of god?

It certainly does. its not as if the economic opportunities in Nigeria or Mexico are on the same level as they are here in the USA.

But these folks aren't rich, nor do they come from the Middle Class. What your missing here wrt Boko Haram, is its leader appears to be at times, on drugs or appears to have a mental condition. Take a look at this video,

http://www.cnn.com/2014/05/07/world/...ile/index.html

The Boko Haram leader does claim Islam to influence his ways, but of course the Quran doesn't say to kidnap hundreds of girls for no reason. Throughout history folks have used religion to justify acts of injustice.

You point out the fact that Boko Haram has killed Muslims. Groups like Al Qaeda and Boko Haram are led by individuals who ironically, often receive western educations, these groups seek land/money/resources. Leaders of Al Qaeda have been found with porn, and been proven to visit strip clubs. I saw a recent documentary on Al Jazerra which showcased a Taliban leader saying its ok to smoke weed, we just try and get people to quit.

AL Qaeda, Boko Haram use their version of Islam as a tool to recruit what mostly amounts to impoverished teens.

This is not the case in Mexico/Columbia though, kidnapping of children is a issue the world faces, and is not limited to any belief systems.

Lets not forget about the Muslims/Christians of Nigeria who want to get there girls back.

A Nigerian NGO has written to President Goodluck Jonathan requesting permission to recruit, train and arm thousands of civilian volunteers to fight the Boko Haram militant group, according to the group's leader.

"We have allowed the crisis to become more complicated. We have been too slow; we have been sleeping," Peregrino Brimah, a popular social activist and public intellectual, told Anadolu Agency.

In the letter, dated April 26, the Every Nigerian Do Something (ENDS) told the president that nearly 25,000 Nigerians – including retired soldiers and policemen - had volunteered to take the battle against Boko Haram to the insurgents' hideouts provided they are allowed to carry arms.

http://www.turkishweekly.net/news/16...oko-haram.html

OK so your position is what, Islam plays no role in anything they do? Everyone just misjudged them and misheard them millions of times?

thing is, if religion suddenly dissapeared, would everyone suddenly start being nice to each other? No, people would still be doing ****ty things to other people. So, although it can appear that religion is the "reason" that they are doing the acts, its just one link in a long chain of causes and effects, beliefs and ideas. If religion suddenly disappeared, something else would step in to fill the power void.

Except I never made the argument that if religion never existed everyone would turn into angels.

I made the argument that if religion never existed a group of ignorant neanderthals who champion illiteracy wouldn't have kidnapped 200+ little girls out of a school specifically for the heinous crime of attempting to become literate.

Fantaz, lets keep in mind the fact that a decent # of Muslims around the world live in impoverished areas. Its not as if terror attacks occur in the UAE or Kuwait in the same capacity as they do in Iraq, Afghanistan or even Nigeria. Folks like the leader of Boko Haram are in the wrong.




Take a look at what Hisham Kabbani, a well known Lebanese-American Sufi Muslim leader, has to say about extremism and the Muslims around the world who do commit acts of injustice based on their misunderstandings of Islam,


In a 2000 interview with the Middle East Quarterly, he clarified his position that "the problem of extremism is not confined to the Muslim community... Extremism is an unwillingness to accept any viewpoint but one's own... Ideological extremism can result in an act of violence when an individual pursues his ideas to such an extreme that he thinks only his ideas are correct and must therefore be enforced on everyone else."


In 2011 Shaykh Kabbani and Dr. Homayra Ziad (Islamic Studies, Trinity College, CT), wrote a fatwa using Quranic exegesis, a review of hadith, and linguistic analysis to determine that the Quran does not condone domestic violence. According to the authors of the fatwa, the broader message of the Qur'an is the promotion of harmony and affection between husband and wife so that they may develop amongst themselves a sacred bond of love and mercy.

In fifteen centuries, Islam has never sanctioned any form of family violence. How then did this scourge become widespread in the Muslim community? As in other religions, Islamic law forbids such practices has been systematically decontextualized by patriarchal scholars whose dogma dismisses the socially inclusive, inalienable rights bestowed upon women by Islam.

To remain relevant to the human experience, legal rulings must adapt ot changing social norms while upholding the core Qur’anic values of mercy and justice. To eradicate family violence, it is time for Muslim scholars to stop blindly following literalist interpretations of Islamic texts and strive for novel interpretations that are based on classical methodologies. This is not thinking outside the box; rather, it is extending the boundaries of the box in which Muslims think. This fatwa is an effort to generate sustainable social change among Muslims and to help others better understand and address Islam’s prohibition of domestic violence.

http://www.worde.org/publications/wo...stic-violence/

Citing the philosophies of well meaning and peaceful Muslims is a complete red herring when debating whether other Muslims are influenced to be violent by Islam or not.

Ok, and what I am saying is, that you have no proof that they wouldnt. Religion is only one part of what caused this to happen. Education, parenting, wealth, etc, all play a part. How would you show that if religion never existed, they wouldnt have kidnapped 200 girls?

The predominant philosophy of the group and of the attack is that education is a sin, western education is a sin, and women getting educations is sinful. If you are poor and your goal is to get money, kidnapping 200+ girls who have no money, and whose families have very little or no money, is a pretty horrible way to try counteract the financial ruin of your clan of impoverished savages. The predominant philosophy was that the girls learning is a sin. There were a million other crimes they could have committed that would have been more lucrative for them to get money that wouldn't have attracted the attention of governments around the world.

So again, it is very obvious that the predominant philosophy behind the attack is a religious one. Given that, had religion never existed, it is extremely likely the event never would have taken place. That is common ****ing sense. Can I prove that? No, I don't have a way of testing alternate universes. If your argument is to break down the world and essentially say we can't ever know anything so haha I win, then you're obviously backed into a corner. This is a discussion of practicality and rationality and probability, not of absolute scientific facts.

Religion did disappear form my life. And some of the things it taught me are now different. Like women dont have to be barefoot and pregnant and things like gays are not bad. Nothing stepped in to fill the power to keep those ideas the same.

Is this also the predominant philosophy of islam? It sounds more like a control issue, and I agree that religion is used to control. But remove religion, and there will still be the need and desire to control. I dont get why you seem so certain that with religion removed, this would not have happened, especially as you say "I don't have a way of testing alternate universes". I know that people restrict or deny education to females for reasons other than religion too.

No, you misunderstand. religion didnt "suddenly disappear from your life" the fact that you are still talking about it shows that it didnt. Maybe you dont believe any more, but not because religion disappeared, but because you were exposed to other ideas, and ripe and ready to receive those ideas. A process happened which included religion.

What I am saying is, that if religion had never existed, but everything else stayed the same, its quite likely that the same beliefs, motives and actions would exist, because religion isnt the "cause" of those motives, its all inextricably linked over a vast period of time. They feed into each other.

I don't need a way to test alternate universes in order to say something with confidence. If I required absolute scientific proof that I am right about everything in I do in my life before I do it, I never would have made all the money playing poker that I did. I never would have taken the risk of going into debt to go to college for a chance at better career opportunities. Almost every decision we make in life is a decision that is informed by rationality but incapable of being scientifically validated.

I can't test alternate universes to see if what I am saying is a scientifically verifiable fact, but all logic and rationale say that it's a damn good bet.