Interesting read on the decline of religious faith in children.

Show me a left wing gun owner that hasn’t been recently woke

Show me where you manage to source all your mobile goalposts first.

why don't you list some examples of thriving societies without religion.

Curious how you might define 'thriving' and 'without religion' here since it seems like there's a lot of wiggle room - you'd most likely end up arguing whether it was a primary driver of things or whether religion itself was the key component.
 
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Show me where you manage to source all your mobile goalposts first.



Curious how you might define 'thriving' and 'without religion' here since it seems like there's a lot of wiggle room - you'd most likely end up arguing whether it was a primary driver of things or whether religion itself was the key component.
we can remove "thriving" and replace it with existing or surviving if you want. the answer will be the same.
if "godless" societies were viable, there would be many examples, but i cannot think of one.
 
I don’t believe left gun owners. Left idealoigy is full of unconstitutional things.
I don’t support or agree with anyone who seeks to deny me my rights. Ignorance and stupidity is no excuse.
The treatment left receive here is not originating from the people on here that believe in God. Have you ever studied group thought and behavior? I have. I’ve actually seen a lot of society at its worst.
I’m not the best at math but I can see a common denominator.. anyone that is against me/and or my rights and has no problems with them being violated is my enemy. I could care less if my enemy likes guns or not until they are close enough to be a physical threat.
 
we can remove "thriving" and replace it with existing or surviving if you want. the answer will be the same.
if "godless" societies were viable, there would be many examples, but i cannot think of one.

So the argument is that human social organization isn't possible without belief in a higher power being commonplace within the group that's organizing? And that higher power could be mono/polytheistic, animist, whatever? I believe the word you're looking for is "imagination" then, not religion. And I wouldn't dispute that.
 
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what surviving culture was formed without or in the absense of religion and exists without it today.
certainly if a godless culture was better there would be many successful examples. list them.
Actually that’s a false premise. Just because something is common tool of socialization doesn’t mean that it’s premise nor metaphysics are correct. Trying to dupe people out of money and brow beat them to do what you say is much older than written books. Everyone searches for answers to things that they can’t explain. And there is one major religion that has atheistic branches. Buddhism. And in particular Zen Buddhism.
 
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Yeah, I am having a hard time tracking the premise due to lack of definitions and potential confounders. Is it the idea that the culture, society, and/or government's adopting a religion is necessary for "formation" ? I think there are different answers to all those. Ultimately, the biggest confounder is that religion has held vast power and resources over society, and not all of it was through consent of the people, so that is difficult to measure as a standard.

What may be more interesting is looking at 12-15 KPIs for a group of countries today, and then compare those KPIs across countries based on their overall religiosity. Said another way, when we look at the world today and rack and stack respective country religiosity at the governmental level, how do they perform across those KPIs?
 
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An interesting thought for the pure "science" folks.
Give the explanation of dark matter.
As this represents 75% of the cosmos one surely can't believe
In it without a sound understanding.
Otherwise it would take faith in the suppositions given.
Thus it will meet the definition of dogma.
Might as well add dark energy.

R
 
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So the argument is that human social organization isn't possible without belief in a higher power being commonplace within the group that's organizing? And that higher power could be mono/polytheistic, animist, whatever? I believe the word you're looking for is "imagination" then, not religion. And I wouldn't dispute that.
not all all. it may be possible, and it may have happened, but obviously didn't survive.

/unless i missed somebody's list of godless cultures.
 
An interesting thought for the pure "science" folks.
Give the explanation of dark matter.
As this represents 75% of the cosmos one surely can't believe
In it without a sound understanding.
Otherwise it would take faith in the suppositions given.
Thus it will meet the definition of dogma.
Might as well add dark energy.

R
Here’s a good explanation for it based on the current knowledge. Scientists in general are willing to admit what they don’t know. Religious people try to make phenomena fit into their paradigm. https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/focus-areas/what-is-dark-energy
 
Deity is an imaginative fabrication to assit with group level survival but it's evolved from the same group cutlure that existed before it and once we've evolved from religion, we'll have other group identifiers to rally around and affiliate with.

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An interesting thought for the pure "science" folks.
Give the explanation of dark matter.
As this represents 75% of the cosmos one surely can't believe
In it without a sound understanding.
Otherwise it would take faith in the suppositions given.
Thus it will meet the definition of dogma.
Might as well add dark energy.

R

 
Uh Buddhism is a religion.. dude
Some would call 'Buddhism' a religion, some would call it a philosophy. True Buddhism has no God, it is a logical construct of the eightfold path to illumination and liberation.


Noble Eightfold Path - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Noble_Eightfold_Path


The Noble Eightfold Path is an early summary of the path of Buddhist practices leading to liberation from samsara, the painful cycle of rebirth. The Eightfold Path ...
The Eightfold Path · ‎Tenfold Path · ‎Further explanation · ‎Right concentration
 
Gee science were it’s normal to keep adjusting what you believe based on new info while criticizing someone who has strong unchanging conviction in what they believe.
Yeah and forcing scientists to publicly disavow their findings when it doesn’t mesh with your “ firmly held beliefs”. They literally tortured people, some to death over things like the earth is flat and the sun revolves around the earth. https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/galileo-is-accused-of-heresy
 
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Sounds a lot like dogma.
The irony of your supposition concerning phenomena fitting their paradigm...
Have you ever heard of global warming?

R
I’ll just take that as my kar-ma ran over your dog-ma. “There is much that isn’t known “ is basically in the heading of the article. Some dogma. It points more to your lack of understanding of space and gravity. Maybe particle physics is not exactly your forte.
 
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buddhism is not a society or culture, but a relatively modern belief system that came after shamanism, which followed others...
while china is officially atheistic, most chinese still practice some form of chinese religion.
That’s a very ignorant statement. Buddhism started hundreds of years before Christianity. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gautama_Buddha
 
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Left wing gun owner.... so you don’t believe in God but you believe in unicorns.
Newsflash, not believing in a mythological creature is neither leftwing nor right wing. I make Trump look like a libtard, yet dont believe in any mythological creatures like “gods”.
 
Gee science were it’s normal to keep adjusting what you believe based on new info while criticizing someone who has strong unchanging conviction in what they believe.

yeah, it's called discovery and learning. Progress.

Religion has a rich history of being against it. Science seeks to cure the disease while the religious say it's god's will and should be accepted as punishment or a divine 'trial'. What utter nonesense. It's like those idiot parents who pray in lieu of getting their child medical attention and then cry when they're accused of negligence or murder.

The whole premise of a promised afterlife and of being 'saved' reeks of the worst kind of narcissism and smugness. What a facade of goodness it is when you do good deeds with the desire of eternal reward. Where's the good in that? What an insidious tyranny to say that there is a vile, vengegul and mindlessly violent god that is all seeing, all knowing and all present and will throw you into eternal torment for not believing in him and following his word like sheep. Can you imagine a more tyrannical construct? And yet, in the same book, in the same breath the hypocrisy of love, sacrifice and salvation.

There is little that the dogma following religious can offer to match the contributions and human advancement through science, literature and sociology. Religious institutions are on the whole narcissistic, vengeful, predatory and thankfully, atrophying. They are dark spots that are ever shrinking as we throw more light across our own existence and our ever smaller place in the universe.
 
But not in terms of modern religions. Perhaps only Judaism and Hinduism are older than Buddhism rather than newcomers like Christianity, Islam, Satanism, Mormonism, Scientology, etc.
we are not limited to modern religions when debating claims that "successful societies began and thrived in the absence of religion".
my assertion is that these ideas of a creator, or something that governs over us, came with the ability for any member of a species to kill the alpha of the group and take what is his/hers.
in the absence of this control, each collective would lose the alphas (the best of the group) and ultimately die out from lack of competent leadership.
an argument can be made that we see this in washington dc right now.

what we ended up with is that virtually every culture or society that survived long enough to be represented in history had some form of religion.
 
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yeah, it's called discovery and learning. Progress.

Religion has a rich history of being against it. Science seeks to cure the disease while the religious say it's god's will and should be accepted as punishment or a divine 'trial'. What utter nonesense. It's like those idiot parents who pray in lieu of getting their child medical attention and then cry when they're accused of negligence or murder.

The whole premise of a promised afterlife and of being 'saved' reeks of the worst kind of narcissism and smugness. What a facade of goodness it is when you do good deeds with the desire of eternal reward. Where's the good in that? What an insidious tyranny to say that there is a vile, vengegul and mindlessly violent god that is all seeing, all knowing and all present and will throw you into eternal torment for not believing in him and following his word like sheep. Can you imagine a more tyrannical construct? And yet, in the same book, in the same breath the hypocrisy of love, sacrifice and salvation.

There is little that the dogma following religious can offer to match the contributions and human advancement through science, literature and sociology. Religious institutions are on the whole narcissistic, vengeful, predatory and thankfully, atrophying. They are dark spots that are ever shrinking as we throw more light across our own existence and our ever smaller place in the universe.
I’ll fight for your right to believe in science.
Will you fight for my freedom of religion?
 
we are not limited to modern religions when debating claims that "successful societies began and thrived in the absence of religion".
my assertion is that these ideas of a creator, or something that governs over us, came with the ability for any member of a species to kill the alpha of the group and take what is his/hers.
in the absence of this control, each collective would lose the alphas (the best of the group) and ultimately die out from lack of competent leadership.
an argument can be made that we see this in washington dc right now.

what we ended up with is that virtually every culture or society that survived long enough to be represented in history had some form of religion.
To quote another scientist “ Correlation does not imply Causation” . It’s a common socialization tool.
 
of course.
Ok. brother in arms. I like the speed and simplicity of your answer.
I pray and have had less pain as a direct result of prayer.
I go to the hospital too.
I recognize docs often just don’t know.
Yet if my kid is sick and I only pray over him you imply I’m doing something wrong.
There is a fine line between raising a kid and abusing one. Having had a few kids and being one myself I’ve recognized everyone is different and must be treated as such. I am obviously passionate about what I believe in so not everyone comes to the same conclusion as me.
In Cali a kid was taken away from his parents when they took their sick kid home to break a fever instead of the emergency room against the advice of the naturalist doc who was wrong in his assessment.
Leo showed up and did a no knock raid. Took both kids and months later they Still didn’t have their kids back.
I can see both sides of this situation but see not how it matters Not if we are for the constitution.
I am curious to hear your thoughts now. I have taken a oath. And God expects his followers to take oaths seriously.
 
To quote another scientist “ Correlation does not imply Causation” . It’s a common socialization tool.
observation and conclusion.
i could be wrong, but if i was there would probably be examples of my mistake.
feel free to provide examples.

you are free to label it as common socialization tool, and i would even agree.

looks like the difference is that i believe earlier humans required something like it in order to compete and survive.
this replaced "survival of the fittest" with survival of humans that could understand concepts beyond their own base wants and needs, and were willing and able to surrender to the rules of the collective in order for the collective to thrive.
 
of course.

200%. Ardent constitutionalist here. I hold the 1A close (freedom of association and worship specifically), as close as I do the 2A. I love Alito's recent talk he gave talking about the flagrant religious persecution we've seen during COVID shut downs. He was fucking spot-on about the hypocrisy of allowing people to go to casinos, fly on airplanes, while simultaneously shutting down places of worship.
 
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I’ll just take that as my kar-ma ran over your dog-ma. “There is much that isn’t known “ is basically in the heading of the article. Some dogma. It points more to your lack of understanding of space and gravity. Maybe particle physics is not exactly your forte.
If you look closely I never said that it was.
I only pointed out the lack of knowledge on subjects with far reaching conclusions based on a small percentage of the total data.
Also "there is much that isn't known" could include intelligent design.
As you seem to portray a firm grasp let's hear about the 75% of the cosmos that I mentioned.
Or will I receive another deflection?

R
 
It’s funny how you’re having an issue with Pascal. He’s on your team, and you used his argument to prove the validity of your belief.
I was learned up through experience so tend to distance myself from others schools of thoughts. I strive to have original ideas. I’ll wait for y’all to stop laughing now... Pascal sounds like your typical thing lectured by a professor amongst young kids eager to hear something smart from someone who is not dad. Especially if it contradicts what dad taught by example.
I was wrong once before so I suppose it could happen again. I found it amusing last night how y’all appeared more likely to believe a mortal being with a title over a book that’s been around for a while and has yet to be disproved.
 
There’s a big difference between God and “any mythological creatures like gods”
No, no there isnt. You just believe in one out of thousands that mankind has concocted up. You just so happened to be raised in a christian dominated segment of society. If you had been raised in oh say, Pakistan, you’d be saying allah, not god.