Gunmen Kill 12 at Office of French Satirical Magazine "Charlie Hebdo"

[Michael P]

Religion is a means of forming social bonds and understanding our relationship to the universe and each other. There's nothing inherently bad about either of those things.

The problem comes when people start using it as a cudgel against others or an excuse for their shitty behavior.

[People Of The Earth]

FOR F--KS SAKE!
http://news.yahoo.com/man-takes-host...-business.html

It was unrelated, and now it's over.

[lancerman]

Race is not bad obviously.

Communism is nice at its core, but flawed.

Religion is inherently bad. I'm surprised no-one else has pointed this out (or maybe they have and I missed it).

Neither of these things are inherently bad.

[the4thpip]

[the4thpip]

Legendary comic book anthology series Spirou does a Charlie Hebdo special this week.

[emac1790]

No there is not one single inherently bad thing about the concept.
Gives hope, redemption, possibility of a future past even death, possibility of finding peace even if one can not in this life, seeing family and friends who have died again, a reason for existing living and not killing ourselves to end our earthly misery, the possibility that you might be protected on some level by a force in the universe, that just cus you made mistakes it does not nessicrally make you a bad person just someone who was manipulated or distracted by a greater evil in the universe, moral guidelines (yes I know atheist can have morals but they can be altered or the lines and meaning can be blurred or ignored without guilt, , religious morals are to believers fact without waver which is both good and bad, good for knowing when where the absolute line not to cross is, bad as false or less peaceful religions can set in stone rules that are harmful).
Even if we are wrong and there is no afterlife of any kind, you won't exist to be disappointed and if the hope or the faith that it would happen brought you peace, hope and a drive to move forward in life then it was worth it regardless.

I'm an atheist and speaking for myself, the bolded line is bullshit. Perhaps I'm misreading that line, but it's like you're saying that an atheist changes their morals at whim because they're not religious. Sure an atheist could change their morals at whim. So can a Muslim. Or a Jew. Or a Christian.

That's not a religious thing, it's a human being thing.

[Spike-X]

Belief is fine. Religion, on the other hand...

[Shawn Hopkins]

Personally I prefer to take resposibilty for my moral choices. It always seemed to me that it's a bit infantalizing to bribe people to be moral by offering them bliss if they're good and punishment if they're bad. That's how you train an animal, the carrot and the stick. Being able to write your misdeeds off as the result of temptation by some malevolent evil entity also seems less moral than taking personal responsibility for them.

As far as the afterlife goes, I've found it can be a bit of a destructive concept, aside from its usefulness in making people behave and the peace of mind it gives believers. Because it breeds cynicism in too many, they give up on the goodness of the world we have now and start thinking only of their mansion in the sky. If they thought this was the only world, maybe they'd work harder to fix it.

One way I've seen this manifested is the idea that the poor will always be with us, so people try to comfort and minister to the poor instead of ending poverty. Others seem to twist the Bible to reject the need to take care of the environment, saying God gave it to us to use, he won't let things like global warming get that bad, and the Rapture is coming soon anyway.

[dancj]

No there is not one single inherently bad thing about the concept.
Gives hope, redemption, possibility of a future past even death, possibility of finding peace even if one can not in this life, seeing family and friends who have died again, a reason for existing living and not killing ourselves to end our earthly misery, the possibility that you might be protected on some level by a force in the universe, that just cus you made mistakes it does not nessicrally make you a bad person just someone who was manipulated or distracted by a greater evil in the universe, moral guidelines (yes I know atheist can have morals but they can be altered or the lines and meaning can be blurred or ignored without guilt, , religious morals are to believers fact without waver which is both good and bad, good for knowing when where the absolute line not to cross is, bad as false or less peaceful religions can set in stone rules that are harmful).
Even if we are wrong and there is no afterlife of any kind, you won't exist to be disappointed and if the hope or the faith that it would happen brought you peace, hope and a drive to move forward in life then it was worth it regardless.

Religion makes people accept suffering in the hope of a better afterlife.
Religion causes people to waste time praying that their problems will be fixed rather than fixing them.
Religion causes people to seperate themselves into tribes with opposing beliefs.
Religion causes people to stick to an outdated moral code written centuries ago.
Religion often causes homophobia, sexism and racism.
Religion puts undeserving and often dangerous people in positions of power - and makes that power so absolute that the people inevitably become corrupt even if they started off good.
Religion tries to claim it's a good thing to believe in something without any good evidence.
Religion causes people to deny themselves and their children vital medical treatment.
Religion causes people to mutilate their children.
Religion makes some people consider themselves superior to others.
Religion gives people justification for their own prejudices.

[George Caltsoudas]

Religion makes people accept suffering in the hope of a better afterlife.
Religion causes people to waste time praying that their problems will be fixed rather than fixing them.
Religion causes people to seperate themselves into tribes with opposing beliefs.
Religion causes people to stick to an outdated moral code written centuries ago.
Religion often causes homophobia, sexism and racism.
Religion puts undeserving and often dangerous people in positions of power - and makes that power so absolute that the people inevitably become corrupt even if they started off good.
Religion tries to claim it's a good thing to believe in something without any good evidence.
Religion causes people to deny themselves and their children vital medical treatment.
Religion causes people to mutilate their children.
Religion makes some people consider themselves superior to others.
Religion gives people justification for their own prejudices.

Religion is designed to also achieve the opposite result of all these things you mentioned.
In the end, it's not the religion that's at fault--it's the people and what customs some people choose to uphold.

[Username taken]

Religion is a means of forming social bonds and understanding our relationship to the universe and each other. There's nothing inherently bad about either of those things.

The problem comes when people start using it as a cudgel against others or an excuse for their shitty behavior.

This basically.

Religions don't kill people. People kill people.

And people simply need an excuse to kill.

[Shawn Hopkins]

dancj has hit on one of the most dangerous things about religion, the appeal to divine authority. You can shut down any rational debate or justify any irrational action with "God said so." The Charlie Hebdo murderers, if they'd sat down and honestly used logic, probably wouldn't have been able to justify killing cartoonists for making rude drawings. But they really wanted to because they were filled with hate, so they decided the cartoonists had broken one of God's rules and that God says people who break that rule have to die.

You see a similar thing in the gay marriage debate. People who oppose gay marriage really, really struggle to come up with logical, moral reasons why we should continue to oppress homosexuals. But they still have "God said so" to fall back on, so they keep doing it.

It's not that people wouldn't want to do immoral, irrational or illogical things without divine authority. But they wouldn't have this conversation stopper, this shield that attempts to compel us to give automatic respect to their insanity on the basis that we should respect other people's religious beliefs. If you do that, then you fall into the trap where your only recourse is debating whether they're interpreting religion the "right" way, which is impossible to win because religion can be interpreted any way one wants.

[dancj]

Religion is designed to also achieve the opposite result of all these things you mentioned.

As I understand it, religion was invented as a way to make people accept their miserable lowly lives in the hope of something better later - and keep them in their place.

[dancj]

dancj has hit on one of the most dangerous things about religion, the appeal to divine authority. You can shut down any rational debate or justify any irrational action with "God said so." The Charlie Hebdo murderers, if they'd sat down and honestly used logic, probably wouldn't have been able to justify killing cartoonists for making rude drawings. But they really wanted to because they were filled with hate, so they decided the cartoonists had broken one of God's rules and that God says people who break that rule have to die.

You see a similar thing in the gay marriage debate. People who oppose gay marriage really, really struggle to come up with logical, moral reasons why we should continue to oppress homosexuals. But they still have "God said so" to fall back on, so they keep doing it.

It's not that people wouldn't want to do immoral, irrational or illogical things without divine authority. But they wouldn't have this conversation stopper, this shield that attempts to compel us to give automatic respect to their insanity on the basis that we should respect other people's religious beliefs. If you do that, then you fall into the trap where your only recourse is debating whether they're interpreting religion the "right" way, which is impossible to win because religion can be interpreted any way one wants.

Nicely put

[Michael P]

As I understand it, religion was invented as a way to make people accept their miserable lowly lives in the hope of something better later - and keep them in their place.

You understand poorly.