Why does it seem the SL population hates Christians?

There's also:

Jesus SAVES!
... and takes half damage

Whether you believe in a diety or whatever diety you believe in..... Religion doesn't define man... Man created religion. Some might say (if they believe in a God) that God came first, God created man, man created religion as a way to honor God.

If you said FAITH is the essence of what it is to be human, I'd have to say that's entirely possible. But religion itself is a man made thing, simply an institution. A person can have faith without conforming to a religious institution.

You're sleeping with Beckham?!!!

Dont forget Jesus saves
and got a free toaster for opening the account

I started reading that book but then it got lost in the huge stack of books I'm reading right now. I ought to finish it. It is a valid point that we should consider the rationality of others when deciding how much trust to put in their ability to make rational decisions. Maybe what I said earlier about respecting religious people is only true up to a point.

because we all envy his success with snapzilla and anomations.

I'm not going to argue with you. I never mentioned dieties, or faith. Religion is part of what it is to be human. You are just too focused on religious institutions to see the difference.

Religion != religious institutions

Ceremonies are a good example.

What is the purpose of a wedding ceremony?

Why do we have ceremonies that have no regard for a diety or require faith?

Why would humans engage in any kind of ceremony, like a wedding, when there is no connection to a belief in a God or adherence to a specific religious dogma?

The answer: Because the ceremony helps define as as participants in a cooperative society. Cooperation is what defines humanity and all its achievements.

We could talk about all the other stuff you dont like about INSTITUTIONS, but then you'd miss the simple point that there is an evolutionary psychology at work. We have built institutions around the most important things that define us a cooperative humans. The institutions are corrupt, and their messages are distorted. Nonetheless, they represent the what is essentially human - Cooperation.

If faith is involved in anything, it is a faith in the community to which we belong. Dieties are by-products of our humanity. Institutions are man-made, but the religion that inspired them is our humanity

I tried to worship coffee but it burned me.
AAAH IT'S HOT!

You have it exactly backward: our humanity inspired the religion. All a religion is is an attempt to explain the world using a collection of fantastic and unjustified explanations. No religion inspired humanity to be human. We were human from the start and couldn't be anything else, once we evolved to that point. Then we created religions to explain a world -- sun and moon, storms, seas, life and death, etc. -- we couldn't fully understand.

This argument that religion inspired humans to be human is nothing more than a little verbal sleight of hand, slipping the cart before the horse while the audience (some of it) isn't looking.

As for why we use institutions that were formerly religious in semi-secular (or even fully secular) ways, that's nothing more than the impact of religion on culture (which is another human creation).

thats a very common misconception.

Have you read much about evolutionary psychology?

The first thing you would learn is that most people think humans developed religion to explain the unexplainable things around them.
That naive (don't get insulted, look it up if you think I am insulting you- it has a non-derogatory meaning) view does not stand up to scrutiny.

Here's what I'm trying to say:

The human brain is wired by evolution to be more receptive to certain kinds of ideas than to others. That is, people have come up with lots of nutty ideas over the centuries, but the ones that stick are the ones that engage pre-existing machinery for helping us survive as social animals.

This machinery is like a computer which has programs for forming tribes, detecting cheaters, making deals, and avoiding sickness. Run these programs for long enough and you get initiation rituals, vengeful gods, prayer, and burial rites.

Religion is hard-wired into our brains. We didn't invent it, it is part of our humanity. This is why we dont pray to Aimee Weber, even though that may seem as reasonable to you as praying to an invisible, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being. There is a difference.

I appreciate institutions to the extent that they encourage (on the local level, at least) forming tribes(marriage, family), detecting cheaters, making deals (cooperation), and avoiding sickness (cleanliness rituals).

This should be above my previous post


Verbal sleight of hand? I never said that religion inspired humans to be human. I said that religion defines us as humans. Read the above post and you'll see what I mean. I'll agree that I may not be the best person to express these ideas, but pleasse dont be dismissive of very reasonable discussion, unless you have something more interesting to say.

Perhaps you think I'm advocating Christianity? or any religious institution? I am far from that!

I'm advocating the idea that ours brains are geared toward religious thought.

I understand that we both have a goal in this thread. My goal is to discuss that religious thought is not "stupid" or "ignorant" but natural.

Your goal seems to be that religious thought is "stupid" or "ignorant" but we are too conditioned by our culture to know or understand that.

You are very dismissive of ideas that try to explain why humans have acted the way they have for some many millenia. I think its funny that you believe someone smart just finally came long a few hundred years ago and started passing the word that we have been stupid all this time.

I'll admit we have been stupid for allowing institutions to "brainwash" us. But my argument suggests that we were reliogious animals before there were institutions to tell us to be religious.

The funniest thing you said above, Alex, is that culture is a human creation...

lol...you say that as if we could have constructed something else? We "made" culture?

Oh, you mean that our behavours, values, ideas, traditions, religioous thought, etc, define our culture! Hmm, thats different than saying we "create" our culture. We LIVE our culture. Sure, there are forces in a culture that can drive it in a direction..hmm, like homosexuals try to drive American culture toward redefing marriage when all they really want are benefits that the state offers. Now, those benefits are "created" and could be different with just a law. But the conscience of the people are not so easily swayed.

Enjoy your relativist point of view

From what? From Hell? No. From God sending you to hell.

So Jesus saved you from God. And Jesus is God. So Jesus saved you from himself. Think about that. Jesus saved you from himself. Why worship somebody whose claim to fame is he'll send you to hell if you don't? It seems oddly like blackmail to me.

The funny thing is, I really don't think Jesus had any intention of starting a religion that taught that. Remember the Lord's Prayer? "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us..." So God can, at least according to his son, the messiah, forgive those who forgive others. No need at all to believe any set dogma. If you want to be forgiven, you have to forgive others. You don't have to sign up to any religion. It's what you do that's important, not what you believe. At least that's what the messiah himself said. Who knows, maybe he was wrong?

I wasn't going to post in this thread, until I was reminded of these words by a post elsewhere:

XLIII. "How do I love thee? Let me count the ways..."
byElizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of Being and ideal Grace.
I love thee to the level of everyday's
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for Right;
I love thee purely, as they turn from Praise.
I love thee with a passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints, --- I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life! --- and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.

It reminded me that some of the most beautiful expressions of humanity were in the name of the divine, as well as some of the most cruel. That in the name of the same creator, the Crusades were fought, and Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. That the same God that some used to justify their enslavement of others, Martin Luther King Jr looked to as his authority in his quest for liberty.

And I'll be damned if I don't love Gospel music.

Just some thoughts from a non-believer.

Why is it that what you do is important?

non-believer in what? A divine being? or in all religious institutions? or in the idea that religious thought (not DOGMA) is hard-wired into our brains?

Maybe there is a reason you are captivated, others are inspired, and some distort the message. Why is it even significant (in these many ways)?

Which is it? Cooperation defines us as humans or religion does?



Religion is an idea, a structured organized belief system. Your question was, which came first, humanity or religion. Well humanity had to form the beliefs that make up a religion.... therefore human beings created religion as a means of structuring and organizing their beliefs.




You (correct me if i'm wrong) seem to be leaning toward some kind of christian belief system yourself based on your arguements..... but you're using evolution in those arguments. If you believe in evolution then you believe we evolved from apes. So which is it? Is religion hard wired into the mind of an ape as well?

A non-believer in the first two at least. I'm not sure about the third.



I'm sure there is. The nature of humans themselves possibly?



Maybe it's not.

ANSWER:
I think you took these out of context. Cooperation relates to ceremony. Religious ceremonies are more about Cooperation with the community than about Dieties, though dieties have been and are still sometimes part of ceremonies. Try to explain exactly why ceremonies need a diety(they don't) and you'll understand what I mean when I say ceremonies are religious, but they aren't as arbitrary like you would try to argue.

Religious thought is hard-wired into our brains. So, it is essentially human to have religious thought



ANSWER:
Wrong. Humans did not create religion, but are hard-wired for religious thought. Would you say that man ever had the choice to be social animals or solitary animals? I would argue that man never had that choice, just like man never had the choice to not have religious thought.



ANSWER:
Where have I even begun to talk about Christianity?

Sorry if this is a difficult topic to discuss, but RELIGIOUS THOUGHT, not THEOLOGY, DOGMA or CHURCH is what I am talking about. I appreciate that you feel you have a relevent point to make, but I have done my very best to make it clear that I'm not talking about any specific religious theology at all, I am talking about the hard-wired religious thought (it comes built-in with our brains when we are born, and evolves as we evolve) But thanks for your attempt to make me appear self-contradicting.

just to finish the above answer to the question,
"So which is it? Is religion hard wired into the mind of an ape as well?"

Well, an ape isnt human. I'm no evolution expert as you may be, so tell me what you know about this: At what point does an ape become a man?

For the record, the focs in on Evolutionary Psychology (thats the study of the Evolution of the Psychology of man). If you think the psychology of man is separate from the evolution of man, then I'd be interested in what you have to say

If you don't think your dog worships you like a god, just give him a strip of bacon.

Cats are apostates, though.

Either you intend to argue that all animals are hard-wired with religious thought, or human behavior is no different than that of cats and dogs.

Or, perhaps you are just being funny

going to bed.

If anyone is interested, I pulled these ideas from a book called,
Religion Explained, The Evolution of Religious Thought

here's a link to some terms and ideas about Evolutionary Psychology

This thread was much more fun than regurgatating the same old tired cliches about religion.

My point, in a roundabout way, is that animals really don't have much thought beyond the here-and-now. It's humans ability to speculate about the future and the past that causes us to seek out religion, or gives us the ability to understand it, depending on your perspective.

Besides, how do you hold on a discussion of metaphysics with a creature with no language? The closest I think we've ever come is one very very tenuous utterance of... Koko's, I think it was... Refering to another gorilla that had died, Koko said something to the effect that the other gorilla went to a "dark place". Which really doesn't mean much, considering how much random, undecipherable crap Koko has said, too.

ah! Yes, I understand what you are saying. Would you say that humans are also unique because they so often act contrary to their self-interest? Or are they not unique in that way?