The true cost of religion, the price we all pay.

Hello people, im back!

I realise that haven’t made a post for a long, long time. This is because I decided to travel the world and learn even more about people and societies. Not necessarily just to be able to diss ridiculous ancient superstitions and cults (often also called religion), but because people and societies interest me.

Luckily I am well off and I can easily afford to take a few years off to study whatever I am interested in.

I have had many experiences across the world and I have learned a lot. It has dawned on me why the west rules the world, and why the only real threat to this dominance is China (atheist) and possibly India (turning atheist) if they get their act together.

It has also become crystal clear the extortionate high price we all pay for religion. I am not just talking about the horrible cost to the individual, but I am talking about the cost to society and how a select few, fucks everyone over with the ultimate tool of ignorance “religion”.

Ignorance is the key word here, because it goes hand in hand with religion, look at the worlds dictatorships and all of them restrict information. This is also true for the dictatorships that are now falling like dominoes, Kaddafi and his ilk. For as long as they managed to control information they remained in control of their population. Once they opened up to the internet and modern communication their days were numbered.

All religions, indeed all oppressive systems can only survive under this principle of control through information denial. This is especially true of Islam and this is clearly illustrated in a frightening statistic.

“In one year Spain translates more books into Spanish than all  the middle eastern countries combined have done since the crusades.”

The power of knowledge is also starkly illustrated by the historic evidence of the Ottoman wars, how could a few thousand Europeans hold their ground against a hundred thousand Turks? The answer is the flow of information of course. Printed books where illegal in the ottoman empire, while in Europe information flowed like wildfire.

The result of the free flow of information is the fall of the church as a dominant force in western societies and it has made the west totally dominant over the rest of the world.

Its not hard to see why this is the case if you consider what religion focuses their efforts on, typical “important” issues in a religious society is honor, female dress code, restricting or regulating sexual activities, killing or incarcerating people for blasphemy, stoning women for being raped, praying at set intervals, etc.

In the west, in productive free societies, focus tend to fall on improving health, life quality, environmental issues, ensuring financial prosperity, improving education, environmental issues, etc.

In most religious societies such issues are not even on the agenda.

For example in the last country I visited before returning home, Pakistan, no one talked about the real problems of their society: poverty, hunger, crime, corruption, health problems, environmental destruction, hunger, imams raping students in Islam schools, terrorism, degrading infrastructure, etc, etc, etc.

None of these issues where up for debate, instead bearded pedophiles (imams) where given hours upon hours of airtime talking about suppressing sexuality, the glory of martyrdom and the alleged greatness of their particular sky daddy.

I find Pakistan to be a particularly interesting case, they are in continuous conflict with India, and yet while India storms forward towards becoming an economic superpower as they focus their efforts on science development and improving the lives of millions of their citizens. Pakistan is going in the opposite direction, its becoming more and more religious and as a direct result more and more citizens fall into bottomless poverty, the average lifespan is falling, literacy rates is in freefall, the economy is contracting at a frightening speed. And in general there is more suffering and ignorance all around.

Its not long until Pakistan no longer pose any real threat to India, apart from nuclear weapons they have no real military force that can match the force India is developing thanks to science and economic prosperity.

No matter how you turn it religion is a huge burden nnot only on individual societies but on the entire planet, We all pay a heavy price for tolerating religion. If we allow it to spread its slimy tentacles it will drown us all in suffering and misery. If I have learned anything from my travels is that religion must be confronted and fought at every opportunity. Any society that don’t fight the oppressive ignorance of religiosity deserves the faith that is coming for them. (see Afganistan).

The west has nothing to fear from fighting the religious mob. Especially since we get more and more equal rights between the sexes in the west. Gender equality enriches our lives tremendously, we have better married lives, better sex lives, better family lives and more productive, adaptive, robust societies.

Islamists will never see this fact even though it is obvious, they will continue to oppress 50% of the population and as a result they have to work harder to feed their families as their societies continue to exclude 50% of their workforce and 50% of the nations thinking capacity.

While we in the west move forward to a future with ever longer, satisfying, productive, lives, Religious societies are moving full steam ahead in the opposite direction aiming for the stone age.

We have nothing to fear from them, they will destroy themselves. The question is do we have the hart to stand by and watch while they do so, probably we wont. Our superior morals will compel us to help, but I am not sure if we should.

Of course I am not saying that western society is perfect, no one is! And that is just the point, we recognize that things can be improved and we set out to find new better solutions that improve life for all of us.

Of course some people would like to point out terrorism, but the fact is you are in more danger of injury or death driving your car to work than experiencing a terrorist attack in the west today.

The west is getting a lot of grief, and probably rightly so over incidents where innocent civilians are killed or mistreated in Afghanistan for example. The fact remains that compared to the thousands of military sorties carried out these incidents represents only a tiny fraction, as compared to when the Taliban ruled when pointless death and needless suffering was the norm and a daily occurrence. That doesn’t excuse such instances, but it brings into question if we should help at all?

I don’t know the answer I just think its worth while discussing this question.

From the Taliban’s point of view pointless death and needless suffering was a goal in itself to satisfy their interpretation of ancient fairytales. And they survive only because we show extreme restraint, lets face it, if the west wanted they could turn Afghanistan into a parking lot devoid of any living thing. But the west values life while religion values an imaginary life after death and as a result the human species pays a terrible, terrible price in broken societies, pointless deaths, needless suffering and wasted lives.

The question we are all faced with in the west is:

What can we do to get rid of religion? Not just in our societies but across the globe so we can finally rid our self of this needless burden.

In Search Of The Maker

Good day evryone!

In my quest to turn the flaming contest you can mostly see in recents posts, into an actual discussion worth having, we are going to discuss the posibility of a creator here. Any by that, i mean the probability that our universe is the work of the hand ( Or tentacle – more on this later. ) of one or more sentient beings.

To make things easier, i am going to refer to this person or group as “The maker”, to prevent any further confusion i have to put emphasis one these:

- I am not talking about any god or gods from some religion. This is a serious post that should be folowed by a serious discussion, not a place for fairy tales, or to push your delusions on others.

- This is all speculation, and evry claim that is not following the pharse “the fact that” or something similar, is to be treated as such.

- This is a two parter, this part is about arguments for or against the idea of a universe that was made by someone. The second one will be for the nature of the maker. If you simply HAVE to push your gods into it, rather do it in the second, as in this one.

Now thats all clear, here are the arguments for the existence of the maker.

First, the most often heard, the logical hullaloop many people use:

“Someone had to make you, and the world ect. Things dont come out of nowhere.”

The rebuttal for that is simple, nobody said we came out of nowhere. And you cant apply this at all, without contradicting yourself. If evrything would need a maker, there would be nothing. If you say the maker is an excepcion, then why couldnt be the world be an excepcion as well?

That being said, that the world doesnt needs a maker, it doesnt necessarily means that it has none.

Next is a much more convincing argument. The fine tuning of the universe.

As you might know, if you had basic education in physics, our world as we know it, or rather the matter we are made of, mostly consists of molecules, wich consist of atoms, wich consist of subatomic particles. These things are all held togedher by various forces. You know of gravity, you know of magnetic forces, yes? Think of these subatomic forces, like something similar. Unlike gravity and magnetism however, if these forces would change only a bit, our universe would be a great nothingness.

If that wich keeps the nucleus of an atom in one piece was just a bit weaker, there would nothing but hydrogen and free neutrons in our world. If the force keeping the electrons in place would be just a bit weaker, or stronger, we wouldnt even have that, either electrons would go free, leaving us with nothing but aplha and beta rays (free protons and electrons), or they would dive into the nucleus leaving us with free neutrons with nothing better to do as flying around.

In other words, it looks like as if someone or something had really fine tuned the universe, so matter itself, stars, planets, back holes could come into existence.

While so far this is the most convincing argument for a Maker, keep in mind that there are other possible explanations for this. I could name at least tree.

- The Anthropic principle.: The fisher who wonders why he doesnt catch fish smaller as the holes in his net. The idea is that there might be infinate universes, and ours is the one where our existence is possible, othervise we woudlnt be here to discuss it, no?

- The idea of a “natural selection” of universes.: There might be a number of universes, and other universes spam from them, but only from those capable of sustaining black holes, and our kind of matter is needed for this. Thats closer a bit to science fiction, as there is nothing to indicate black holes spawn entire universes. The so called “white holes” that spill out the matter that a black hole sucked in somewhere are just a theory, we have yet to spot one.

- There might be an unseen constant in the equation of sumbatomic forces that our scientists missed so far, that would correct the other forces to match if one changed.

I know these were only two arguments for a maker, but it was the two most important ones i think. The one most often repeated, and the one i actually find convincing.

Now an argument against the Maker. The universe itself.

Yes, the Universe itself, why? Just look at it. Do you see any order in it, anything that might serve any kind of purpose, or goal, or at least looks like a bit as if it was planned?

And dont you point out things on our world, our planet is a piece of dust flying around a star that is actually in the light-weight league if it comes to stars. We are talking here about the Maker of the universe. Anybody thinking that compared to the universe we count for anything, has delusions of grandeur.

If you watch closely all you can see is nature going its way without any kind of direction or goal to it. Stars burning away their hydrogen, chunks of matter going their path. Evrything seems round, because gravity pulls them togedher that way, evrything is moving like its own inertia and nearby objects are pulling it. Comets, asteroids and planets run into each other, as well as stars sometimes, even entire galaxies are collapsing into another. It looks chaotic, it is chaotic. If any action spawned this, it was more like a giant sneeze, rather then an engeneer spending a night at the drawing table.

Maybe the lead engeneer sneezed on the drawing table and the construction team took their job too literal?

But seriously now, if this was planned in any way, dont tell me that you can make heads and tails of it. If there is any kind of goal, a hand directing it, i dont see it.

Then again, a sentience alien to my own might see some kind of order, and direction in where i only behold chaos and mindlessness. Wich will bring us to part two, the Nature of the hypothetical Maker.

_____________________________________________________________________

For any further arguments for or against a hypothetical creator of the universe, i invite you to comment below. For anything else there will be the next post.

Religion a parsitic idea?

I got a great book for xmas “Religion explained” by cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer. Basically he stipulates how religion is a parasitic byproduct of our natural instincts.

It is created, lives breads and multiplies in human brains, basically a thought or idea that has turned parasitic that overrides reason in veak minded individuals that manage to convince themselves that the parasitic idea is reality and everything else is not.

I cant wait to read this book i will post a review as soon as i am back from my holliday trip.

Joining the knoxville forum?

Update 19 Desember 2009, LMFAO they sensored the thread on the forum! typical religious people….

In the blog stats today i saw some links from a forum in knoxville,  i got quite a lot of traffick from there so i desided to look into it.

aparently someone someone did a cut and paste from the Ultimate example against the christian faith post.

Im very flattered that someone would do this of course but after looking at the topix on this forum i was laughing so hard that i couldnt see from litterarly crying of laughter.

They have some seriously fucked up people on this forum just take a quick glance at the topics:  is a fetus a living person, what do you think of jesus christ and, i hate jesus non believers only, was 9/11 a conspirasy, etc.

Its pretty clear that there are probably some good arguments to be picked with this crowd.

I will enjoy arguing with some of these lunatics, maybe ill let some of them make posts here?

Religious vs Atheist who will live the best life

Muzolf made a seriously funny post here “how the creationists are right, evolution is wrong and my conversion to religion” part 1 and part 2. This post inspired me to make this posting.  I don’t have Muzolfs sharp witty tone, so i try to  make up by being a lot more annoying.

I was thinking about a common statement religious people frequently make “i cant imagine a life without god”, or “my life is better with (insert faith). In the past i have often argued against this by pointing out that they are probably wrong because xyz.. but i realize this is the wrong approach.

A comparative query is better i think, then the dimwitted religious hordes can do their best to argue against themselves.

If you take two people, one atheist and one religious.  Then examine their fundamental life perspective  and evaluate who is more likely to live life to the fullest? who will have the best life?

Who will live a life filled with most contentment, love, satisfaction, pleasure, and joy?

If we begin with the religious mind,  look at the little meaningless restrictions religious leaders and religious followers place on themselves. Such as for example sexual abstinence, or twisting the value of knowledge like the scientific fact of evolution is bad, lets scare the children with suffering in our imaginary hell instead!

Who the hell in their right minds makes a choice for the latter? I wonder if religious morons trade their sanity with the lie of  potentially reaching heaven after death? because when seen through the lense of getting to heaven some of religious dogma can almost make sence.

Religious people live their life a little like if it was  a video game and if they fail they have an extra guy/life that will spawn once they die.

Now an Atheist knows that when the chemical computer that we call our own consciousness shuts down that is it, end of the line. Therefor an Atheist will cram their life full since they know. That this brief spark of consciousness is only temporary and you better make the most of it while you can.

Now all things being considered who do you think will live a better life?

- The religious person who places all kinds of restrictions on themselves on the ridiculous notion that they will have a chance to do it better in the “next round”?

Or

- The Atheist that knows that this is the only time he or she has so they better make it count…

I guess you have to be as stupid as a religious person not to see that one.

How the Creationists are right, Evolution is wrong. Part Two: All the wrong conclusions.

Part 1

So now that we have established that evolution is wrong, the mountains of observable evidence for it are all fabricated by the biggest conspiracy that ever existed, that is somehow better organised as any human institution, or government ever created, and more subtle as any intelligence agency ever known. ( You know i am suprised these guys dont just take over the world, someone with such capabilities certanly could. But given that i cannot imagine humans doing such a good job, the leaders of this conspiracy must be aliens or something. )
So ahem, now that we know that, lets not even consider any alternative theory for our existence, and get to the conclusion that we must have a supernatural origin!

But there is more then one view on the supernatural. Wich one should i pick, or should i pick any? What if they are all wrong? Obviously, i dont have nearly enough information to make up my own system, and supernatural being mostly odorelss, invisible, noncorporeal… in short, not mesurable or testable in any way, i have a hard time gathering information on it to form my own conclusions. I will have to pick one of the existing views on it.
I could go with the most popular ones, but popular doesnt means in any way right, after all there were times when a lot of people believed the earth was flat. Wait! I got at least one way to test supernatural! After all if supernatural spawned the world, that means nature will allso reflect the supernatural at least partially!

After analysing nature, i finally reached my conclusion. The one religion that should be closest to the truth, or at least less wrong as the others. Behold, my conversion to SHINTO!

Monotheists and othervise any non-shintoist ( Given the Japanese relation to religion, even most shintoists themselves. ) will probably be arguing how i am wrong. Well sorry, but the evidence is conclusive.

Take a look at nature, what do you see? Hundreads and thousands of species interacting with eachother. Ahh, the harmony of nature, except if you take a closer look its anything but harmony. Evrything is constantly fighting, unless your on top of the food chain, there is allways something that tries to eat you. And unless you are one of the most basic lifeforms, anything you try to eat does its best to prevent you from eating it, ( True, in cases of plants it mostly just some spikes and thorns, or simply trying to be as of little nutrition as possible.), and no matter what you are, there is allmost certanly competition from other creatures, not to mention your own bretheren.
What kind of cruel being designs such a system? Its counterproductive and inneffective. It causes suffering for the parts of the system, and serves no purpose outside itself.
To give a comparsion, if you design a machine, you will not make the different parts of it fight eachorther, especially not in the energy consuming way nature does it. You will not have a mixer, where the cable does its best to withold electricity, while the motor has to put extra effort in taking it in, and at the same time witholding as much kinetic energy from the mixer part itself, while the whole mixer does its best to withold orange juice from you, and tries to jump at your throat the first chance it gets.

Lets take a look at individual creatures, and their bodies. The designer was apprently not that great of a planner at all. Innefective systems, errors that could have been easily avoided with a little forsight. All it would take for the digestion systems of horses and rabbits, to swap certain areas of their intestines, so it would dissasemble the food first and absorb it after. But the designer was apparently too stupid to do it right. Rabbits have to eat their own feces because of this, horses are simply innefective. Speaking of horses, whoever designed them must have really hated them. The poorly designed guts often cause a slow and painful death for the horses, as if the designer was taking delight in causing pain for them.
Creationists who convinced me often used the human eye as an exemple so i will do so myself. Did you know, that the receptor membrane is actually facing the wrong way? The designer put it facing the insides of our heads, and not in the direction we actually whant to see, while the neural endings conecting these to our brain have been put in the way of our sight, limiting it, and causing a nice blind spot, that still causes hundreads of accidents each year. Oh and dont tell me it cannot be done in another way, because it has been done correctly for octopi and for their relatives. Allmost as if someone else designed them.

See, here is where it has hit me! If i had to assume, that one god did it all, than all these would mean that he is either a cruel bastard who sees life itself as a toy to play with and loves the suffering of its creation, or a blind retard who has no idea what he is doing.
Luckily, there was another option. There is not one, or a few, but thousands of gods! Just like in Shinto ( Alternativly, one could go with Hinduism, or some ancient religion. But many have a single creator god, wich leads us back to the inplausibility of monotheism. ), wich has uncounted gods and spirits. If you assume each of these creatures was planned by a different supernatural being, it all makes sense!
Most of the Kami (god\spirit) who were working on life were not exactly geniuses, but did their best to beat the others, as if it was some sort of contest, apparently.

____________________________________________________________________________________________
Wow, this got long again. But i am not doing a third part.
So, whats our final conclusion? I got a message for you people of „Creationism” or „intelligent design” Several things actually that have nothing to do with how much evidence there is for evolution, or how stupid your religion is.

First: In Science, arguments against Theory A, is not proof for Theory B. And so far all i have seen from you are attacks on evolution. Get a clue idiots! Even if you could ( And you cant.) disprove evolution somehow, that is not a point for „Intelligent design”. You have to prove evidence for the god who supposedly created the world, and the worlds existence is NOT evidence, no matter how much you would like that. If science ever comes to the conclusion that any of its findings are incorrect, it will continue looking for answers, and i can guarantee you, it wont have anything to do with ancient superstition. (With excepcion when the object of the study is religion itself of course.)

Second: By promoting the idea that evry single lifeform was planned by whomever you worship, you are basicly saying that your god is either a jerk, or a retard! Seriously, have any of you ever taken the time to take a closer look at nature, and how it works? Have you noticed such basic facts that allmost evry living being needs to destroy another living being to sustain itself? Or the horribly bad design of our, and many other animals bodies? Doesnt that say something about the nature of the supposed creator? Here is a hint, name it “unintelligent design” and you are a bit closer to reality.

Third: If you belong to any religion, wich has a specific god to whom you have to pay your respects, arguments about a hypothetical creator have lost nothing in your reasoning. You have to provide evidence of that spefic god, because even if there is a creator, in no way would that mean that this creator is indeed your god, or anybodys god for that matter. Oh by the way, an ages old book full of fary tales is NOT evidence.

As my last words in this matter for today, let me tell you these. Please continue, make yourself and your religion look ridiculous by adhering to pseudo science.
And should you succeed taking away peoples confidence in the scientific method, no matter how sad that would be, i will still roll on the floor laughing when thanks to your actions people turn to Voodoo.

How the Creationists are right, Evolution is wrong, and my conversion to religion! Part One

Finally, my eyes were opened. How could i have been so wrong all these years. Listening to the creationists reasoning, i am now fully convinced! Our existence cannot be the result of some mindless biological process! Why? Here are the arguments.

Entropy, the second law of thermodynamics clearly states that in a closed system, there is increasing disorder! Wich is the exact opposite of what evolution does. Nevermind that neither Earth nor the Universe is a closed system. Lets pretend they are, for the sake of my argument.

Ok, but here is the next one. Where did matter come from? I know this has nothing to do with evolution at all, but its an important question. Clearly something cannot come from nothing, right? Well, except that in a mathematical model, if there is equal ammount of anti-something would appear, surely we never heard of such things as anti-matter, right? And never mind the idea that different phisics might apply to other parts of the universe, those phisicists are just silly, surely someone like me, using common sense, and without an education in higher phisics can refute their ideas as stupid. Yeah, take that phisicists! A god or several gods however, dont have to appear from nothing because, err… you know, gods dont do that. They are just… there.

But how did life start? Yeah, right, i actually explained that allready in an earlier response post on these forums, with the million in a million chance, that even if the possibility is wery slim for a self replicating organic molecule to appear, in the wast oceans of prehistoric earth, and a lot of time, that possibility will eventually happen at least once, and it doesnt needs to happen a second time. Well ok, i said that, sooo lets move on to the next topic!

Okay, so maybe the argments arent that good, but they sure convinced me! They even have proof! Supposedly there was a footprint of a dinosaur overlaying that of a human. Yeah, humans and dinosaurs lived side by side some time ago. Apparenty. I have never seen this evidence myself, and nobody credible either, but it sure is convincing. We should probably be extinct by now if that was the case, and different creatures of different ages were actually adapted to wastly different conditions, but im sure there is an explanation for that. Some god or gods made it that way, yeah, if anything else fails, i can allways pull this from my ass.

Oh to hell with it, okay, they were no dinosaurs, you here me? No dinosaurs, they are a fabrication of darwinists! Yeah i know, the bones of dinosaurs and other extint creatures were found long before Darwin lived but umm.. err, ITS A CONSPIRACY!

Yes, a conspiracy! The proof for evolution? All bogus! The similarities in different species? Thats just the creator reusing the same design plans! The genetic proof that different species are related? I know! Evry biologist who ever looked at coromosomes are actually all part of a big conspiracy and are lying! Thats right, and evry time they let you take a look and compare them, they give you forged genetic information! They even go so far as to sabotage evry electromicroscope on the world so it gives you data that support evolution. Its all a big conspiracy! And anthropologists, zoologists, and other scientists, all part of this conspiracy travel around the whole world and dig in those fossils we find! Alternatively maybe some devil puts them there if there is no way a human could have. Different species evolutionsits claim to be closely related interbreeding and having offspring? I… devils do it!

Oh and Darwin was the anticrist, a bad djinni, Loki in duisguise, a rakshasa, an oni, or possibly all things mentioned. And his theory makes people eat babies. I dont know how thats supposed to make evolution untrue, but Ad Hominem attacks are the oldest trick in the book, so i am not going to pass that up.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Thus concludes part one of creationsim vs evoltution, stay tuned for part two where we take things a bit more seriously, and take the logical step, after our not so logical conclusion that supernatural has spawned the natural.

Part 2