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Yes, horrible things have, at times, been done in the name of religion. But to claim that religion, generally speaking, is all about manipulation through misin
by camhart 6y ago
Yes, horrible things have, at times, been done in the name of religion. But to claim that religion, generally speaking, is all about manipulation through misinformation is wrong.
- ako 6y agoI'm not even stating horrible things were done. Religion is just a management tool to align people's actions in a way that benefits the society they live in, and help it succeed in competition with other societies. A lot of the effects of religion have been mostly positive, but in its core it's based on misinformation.
- camhart 6y agoI take issue with the generalization that all religions are based on misinformation.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- qq4 6y agoWhat true accounts would you suggest religions are based upon?
- dimitrios1 6y agoWell in modern times today, eye witness testimony still carries much weight, and still being used to determine truth in a court of law. So therefore, the eye witness testimony of hundreds of commoners, including the inner circle of disciples and apostles who saw Jesus Christ in flesh and blood and attest to his miracles in person, plus the third party accounts by roman and jewish independent observers and historians alike.
- finndark 6y agoI have never heard of any true historical proof of the existence of Jesus whatsoever. No eyewitness accounts, no Roman accounts, no Jewish accounts, etc. And to top it off, his story ends with him rising from the dead!8-))
- cat199 6y ago> No eyewitness accounts, no Roman accounts, no Jewish accounts, etc. debate the authenticity all you want, but what exactly do you think the new testament is?
- wolfgang42 6y agoIt’s hard to be sure of anything that happened so long ago, but there’s plenty of anecdotal evidence, and scholars almost universally agree that there was at least a person by that name doing things in the area at the time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_Jesus and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of_Jesus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sources_for_the_historicity_of... are two good places to start.
- finndark 6y agoAnecdotal evidence? Two thousand years later? "Consider the source!"
- wolfgang42 6y agoThe evidence which I described as ‘anecdotal’ starts a mere twenty or thirty years after Jesus’s death, and comes from sources who didn’t have any particular interest in promoting the Christian agenda. It seems that I may be unlikely to convince you, but if you’ve already got a strong opinion on this it might help to come at it from the other direction and start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory#No_independent_eyewitness_accounts https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christ_myth_theory#No_independ... first. Personally, I don’t really think it matters much either way (the events of a few decades being much less influential than the following two millennia of activities by people who did believe he existed), so I default to taking the word of people who’ve actually studied the matter in depth; but as he was one of several Roman-era Messiah claimants wandering around (we know of at least two others, and there were probably more whose names never made it into the histories we have) it seems reasonable that the group which happened to catch on would have also originally coalesced around an actual person.
- camhart 6y agoWhat religious accounts can you prove are not true?
- tempestn 6y agoThe onus is on the person making the initial claim; you can't make an assertion without evidence and then expect people who disagree to prove the negative. Could say the same thing about claims of rigged elections.
- camhart 6y agoSee my response to arcticbull.
- arcticbull 6y agoThe default state of a human is an agnostic. If you are born and nobody tells you the Good Word, you live your entire life without religion. If someone comes to you one day and tells you a man lives in the clouds with a deep-seated interest in your sex life, the onus is then on you to convince the agnostic. The burden of proof is on you. If I told you the story of our lord and savior Sauron, could you prove to me it's not true? Could you prove to me any of the Lord of the Rings didn't happen? We don't generally require proving a negative.
- camhart 6y agoLook at the context of this discussion. The claim was made that all religion is based on misinformation. I argued that that claim is wrong. Someone responded saying, "find one true account that religion is based on". I responded asking whether they could find an account that is proven false. The context here is important--I'm not arguing my belief in religion, or that you must believe in religion. I'm arguing that not all religion is based on misinformation. I brought up my question to point out that his question is irrelevant, and he can't prove anything to be false, therefore he can't prove that it's all misinformation. If I see a bird fly over my head, then claim to you, "a bird flew over my head", I can't prove it. Neither can you disprove it. That doesn't mean it didn't happen, or that my claim isn't real, or that my claim is misinformation. ~2000 years ago people witnessed Christ die and some claim they saw Him come back to life. They wrote about it. Those letters still exist today. I agree that this information alone is not enough to justify someone changing their life to believe the letters--merely existing doesn't "prove" that what's in them is true. But pretend for a second it really did happen. What evidence/proof do you think you'd find that could prove it? This is honestly getting watered down a lot though, with people jumping in without reading everything. I don't blame them--I do the same on HN. If someone wishes to discuss why I personally believe, and what I believe in, that's a different thing altogether that I'm happy to discuss but not here on HN.
- kingdomcome50 6y agoWhat does it mean to “have faith”?
- camhart 6y agoBelief or trust in something. Oftentimes that something is not something proven using scientific methods.
- minkzilla 6y agoI’d say faith can be belief in anything you haven’t seen yourself, including thing done through scientific methods. I have to have faith in scientist that they know what they are doing and correctly reported their results and in the committees that review them.
- kingdomcome50 6y agoThat's exactly right. You can see how well the above compliments misinformation right? Go ahead and read any religious text (I've read many!). Nearly every culture has one or many myths. Do you believe them to be fact? Or do you only believe your religious text to be true? And if so, why? I don't mean to take a stance against religion in general. I agree with the above commenter that the impact of religion in a general sense does seem to be positive! A shared mythos can be a very powerful way of building community. This can have very real positive affects on a population, and, depending on that mythos, on an individual. But to suggest that religion doesn't require "faith" (i.e. believing in something despite no evidence) is... well... naïve.
- camhart 6y agoIs something false merely because it can't be proven? I've gone through other forks on this thread. Here's my conclusion. No religion that I'm aware of can be proven or disproved based on scientific fact or observation. Yet that does not mean they are all false or true. One could very well be true. Or they could be false. But simply because we can't prove it doesn't mean it must be false. You cannot claim "misinformation" without proving its false. I cannot (and am not) claiming it "information" without proven it true. Its neither. There is a different question to ask, which is how and why people choose to believe in religion provided that they cannot be proven. I have my reasons, my personal evidences, that have led me to believe my religion is true. I also believe that you can learn for yourself whether or not my religion is true. If you wish to learn more about my experience and what has led me to believe, I'll share it in a venue that encourages respect and understanding. Unfortunately online forums rarely provide that.
- catawbasam 6y agoReligion is a powerful force, so it can be used to manage people. But it is far more than that.
- ImprovedSilence 6y agoI think it may be a natural human condition to be a part of a religion. But these days, politics has become the religion, instead of in the past, the religion became the politics....
- cat199 6y agoi sometimes wonder if karl marx were alive today if he would say that mass media is the opium of the masses..
- rayiner 6y agoI’m not sure I totally buy it but stunning parallels: https://us-central1-spirit-fish-function.cloudfunctions.net/sections/news/articles/revenge-of-the-yankees https://us-central1-spirit-fish-function.cloudfunctions.net/...
- stordoff 6y agoI'm unsure why this site is asking for access to my Google account. I suspect this is the same article: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/revenge-of-the-yankees https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/revenge-of-...
- chongli 6y agoReligion is not a tool. It was not designed by anyone. It's an emergent phenomenon, a product of culture. Sure, some people (especially historically) have treated it like a tool, but that is not religion's fault (religion can't be at fault because it lacks agency). Those people would have seized upon whatever cultural phenomenon that was available to their own political purposes.
- arcticbull 6y ago> Religion is not a tool. It was not designed by anyone. It's an emergent phenomenon, a product of culture. It absolutely was designed. Thoughtfully and explicitly. You might find it interesting to learn about how the new testament was assembled. Many books did not make it into the final version of the new testament, left on the cutting room floor of history. The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew for instance has a teenage Jesus fighting dragons. Check out the New Testament Apocrypha. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocrypha https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament_apocrypha
- dooglius 6y agoFrom the linked page, it looks like this occurred hundreds of years after Christianity started, and after it was already quite well-established, so it doesn't seem accurate to say that the Christian religion was designed, even if the new testament was.
- arcticbull 6y agoWithout venturing further back, which we can, consider that for most people the New Testament is the religion. The Old Testament is a collection of neo-pagan stories, fables and rules for fair play in olden times.
- throwawaytolk 6y agoThis is such an uninformed view; I am surprised to see it advanced on this forum. Any scholar of the NT knows that the apochrypha date very late and the cannon is the legitimately oldest extant texts. There is no evidence that earlier texts were excluded. You do know (you probably don't) that the majority of the Pauline epistles are considered to be authentic, by secular atheist scholars, and date to to the middle of the first century right? Outside of the pauline works, Hebrews is dated to no later than about 45 AD by secular, non believing scholars. You're advacing a rather tired late 19th century view that just doesn't wash in the light of modern scholarship but was the darling of many 1800s and early 1900s lutherans.
- Igelau 6y ago> to claim that religion, generally speaking, is all about manipulation through misinformation is wrong This claim only holds water because -- in theory -- there is no precise definition of what "religion" is. In practice, it's a set of rules and rituals to follow (literal manipulation) on penalty of an unprovable/unfalsifiable entity or system punishing you (misinformation). So, okay, "generally speaking" it's not about that. Now show me that the majority of religions don't boil down to manipulation and misinformation.