Religion’s Dirty Dozen—12 Really Bad Religious Ideas That Have Made the World Worse

[Warren Stupidity]

...

​Chosen People –The term “Chosen People” typically refers to the Hebrew Bible and the ugly idea that God has given certain tribes a Promised Land (even though it is already occupied by other people). But in reality many sects endorse some version of this concept. The New Testament identifies Christians as the chosen ones. They talk about “God’s elect,” and in Calvinism these privileged few were chosen before the beginning of time. Jehovah’s witnesses believe that 144,000 souls will get a special place in the afterlife. In many cultures certain privileged and powerful bloodlines were thought to be descended directly from gods (in contrast to everyone else).
...

Heretics – Heretics, kafir, or infidels (to use the medieval Catholic term) are not just outsiders, they are morally suspect and often seen as less than fully human. In the Torah, slaves taken from among outsiders don’t merit the same protections as Hebrew slaves. Those who don’t believe in a god are corrupt, doers of abominable deeds. There is none [among them] who does good,” says the Psalmist.

....

Holy War – If war can be holy, anything goes. The medieval Roman Catholic Church conducted a twenty year campaign of extermination against heretical Cathar Christians in the south of France, promising their land and possessions to real Christians who signed on as crusaders. Sunni and Shia Muslims have slaughtered each other for centuries. The Hebrew scriptures recount battle after battle in which their war God, Yahweh, helps them to not only defeat but also exterminate the shepherding cultures that occupy their “Promised Land.” As in later holy wars, like the modern rise of ISIS, divine sanction let them kill the elderly and children, burn orchards, and take virgin females as sexual slaves—all while retaining a sense of moral superiority.

Blasphemy – Blasphemy is the notion that some ideas are inviolable, off limits to criticism, satire, debate, or even question. By definition, criticism of these ideas is an outrage, and that is precisely the emotion the crime of blasphemy evokes in believers. The Bible prescribes death for blasphemers; the Quran does not, but death-to-blasphemers became part of Shariah during medieval times.

...

http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/tarico20150121

[JDDavis]

1. Bibliolatry

I liked the part about bibliolatry best.

So much of religion is bibliolatry.

[AlbertCat]

2. Say it 5 time real fast!

Bibliolatry Bibliolatry Bibliolatry Bibliolatry Bibliolatry

It does seem to be the hugest, but also the most subtle, roadblock.

[Duppers]

3. excellent

The author applied logic, something that's missing in the lives of most compartmentalised people.

[JDDavis]

4. Oh by the way, thanks for that link.

I am bookmarking that site. Never had seen it before.

Some excellent reading material there.

Here is an excerpt from one other article I came across there.

We are, as Appleman knows, “A beast condemned to be more than a beast: that is the human condition.” We know our lineage, we are brothers of primates, sharing over ninety-eight percent of our DNA with chimpanzees. The legacy of more than one hundred and fifty years of scientific research confirms this central fact—we are modified monkeys who came to dominate other animals because of our large brains. But the brains that created tools also imagined they were the chosen people of the gods, that all other flora and fauna were expendable. This was our true loss of innocence. The notion that “God wills it” serves aggressor nations and species alike. The assault on nature came with the god’s permission but it was an arrogant assumption, dissociated from reality, unstable and self-destructive. “In our fantasies of godlike superiority are the seeds of neurosis, and when they bear their dragon fruit we run for the mind healers.”(14)

God is an invention of our imagination and for many people a seductive idea. (Appleman has in mind the Judeo-Christian God, but this idea would be applicable to other gods as well.) “People in general have never exhibited much passion for the disciplined pursuit of knowledge, but they are always tempted by easy answers. God is an easy answer.” (16) A brain capable of asking questions without answers satisfies itself that some god is the answer, even though this is no answer—the term god only hides our ignorance.

Book review of "The Labyrinth: God, Darwin, and the Meaning of Life"



http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/messerly20150119

[Warren Stupidity]

8. I hadn't seen it before either. It is indeed an interesting place.

[Dont call me Shirley]

5. Commit acts of courageous self honesty.

"Change comes with introspection and insight, a willingness to acknowledge our faults and flaws while still embracing our strengths and potential for growth."

[rurallib]

6. Thanks for this link - I wonder

should there not be an entry for the concept of a God as a bad idea. A divinity, a force, a what-have-you that man defines seems to be the very basis from which the others spring.

Really helped clarify some thoughts I have been having

[Warren Stupidity]

11. I'm open to the idea that the concept of god is not in itself a bad idea.

But it really depends on what you mean by "gods", and getting the god-smacked to actually explain what they mean is generally very difficult. A pantheist view of god as the whole of experience and existence seems to be workable.

So for the most part I agree. When people say they "believe in god" they seem to instead mean that they have subscribed to bunch of whooey and bull-plucky that is ridiculous at best and frequently is an authoritarian paternalistic hate-ridden ideology.

There are reasonable people who think we need to combine rational thinking with transcendent experience - see e.g. Karl Jaspers and others, and they sort of have a point. But given the history of religion.....

[Maineman]

7. Exactly! So true.

[calimary]

9. Most interesting reading!

Thanks for posting. Tons of stuff here for my quotes collection!

Love that line about man being a beast that's condemned to be more than a beast.

[Plucketeer]

10. Thanks for posting this.

As long as perceptive brains survive, there'll be some sort of BS about superiority and the supreme beings invented to justify it. If I have ANY yearning for an afterlife, it's in a place where religion ain't.

[marginlized]

12. Really?! Only a dozen?

One of the worst I can think of that doesn't appear here is mind / body dualism.
That's the basis of the "we're not of this earth, we're really angels in mortal flesh" sort of thinking.
The whole homunculus argument. It separates us from our environment and tells us we have "dominion" over this earth.

I just read Nicholas Carr's "The Glass Cage: Automation and Us",

“the mind is not sealed in the skull but extends throughout the body. We think not only with our brain but also with our eyes and ears, nose and mouth, limbs and torso. And when we use tools to extend our grasp, we think with them as well. “Thinking, or knowledge-getting, is far from being the armchair thing it is often supposed to be,” wrote the American philosopher and social reformer John Dewey in 1916. “Hands and feet, apparatus and appliances of all kinds are as much a part of it as changes in the brain.” To act is to think, and to think is to act.”

http://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/33482231-the-glass-cage-automation-and-us

[AlbertCat]

14. We think not only with our brain but also with our eyes and ears, nose and mouth, limbs and torso.

I wonder how he thinks we even are aware of our eyes and ears, nose and mouth, limbs and torso.

[phantom power]

13. Great articulation of what people mean when we say "religion is bad"

It comes with this nasty meme payload.

[Act_of_Reparation]

15. Blood Atonement

Yeah, I know she mentioned sacrifice, but blood atonement seems much worse to me. You're not just killing something or someone to make an invisible magic sky-man happy, you're killing something or someone because you did something naughty and that's the only way to make things right with the invisible sky-man. Brutality and self-loathing... two great tastes that taste great together.