Belief in something without evidence is delusion. You have been conned by scoundrels.
Belief in an afterlife brings noxious effects. The present world and one's fellow people are devalued. Horrific crimes are justified.
Are you sure that you want to place yourself with the suicide bombers?
Revelations? An unverifiable scam used by scoundrels to con the gullible.
How Smith of the Mormons and all such con men must have laughed when alone at night. They must have been astonished that the rubes would fall for their guff.
The observation above that they only come to individuals makes...
As far as I can see, it is in principle impossible to test the notion of an afterlife. How would one go about it?
Religions are limited just as much as science in this, regardless of the make-believe they peddle.
I am quite sure that the notion of an afterlife came from a category error, like asking where fire goes when the fuel runs out.
Now, of course, it is used by scoundrels to con the gullible. You seem to have fallen for the scam, hook, line and sinker.
Bear in mind that religions have no way to...
As far as their own pronouncements go, religions have no means of discerning truth (see my signature). The notion is irrelevant anyway, as religions are just elaborate con games.
I suggest you do look them up. It won't take much effort. They are a good antidote to the "all things bright and beautiful" guff, as is the Monty Python song "All Things Dull and Ugly".
"People who think they know everything already" Ah, you mean the religious.
Gaps in knowledge are not an excuse for turning to silly legends from humanity's time of ignorance, or for succumbing to the scams of present-day scoundrels.
One could easily derive benefits from untrue beliefs. Benefits are definitely not evidence that anything believed through faith is accurate. The idea that they are is just part of the con games religious leaders play.
I think you have hold of the wrong end of the stick. We were not designed for this world, we evolved in this world. Yours is the puddle in the pothole error.
Beauty is not an attribute of a thing we find beautiful, it is an attribute of our minds that find it beautiful.
Your post puzzles me. Surely religion is a major impediment to reform of established orders.
Another point not mentioned is that religions provide livings and power to clergy. In my opinion, religion is a scam devised for the benefit of clergy.
Come now, you can't really be this dense unless you are trying really hard. The patterns are merely signalling fitness. More impressive = more fit and more likely to procreate. No intentionality is needed.
In the American south, churches actively promoted slavery. Today, the most religious societies are still at it, especially muslim ones.
Rejection of slavery arrived with enlightenment values; religions had to scurry to catch up (those that bothered).
As usual, people tend to be more moral...
Maybe insult and mockery would work better. I read that one cannot reason someone out of an idea they didn't reason into. Could one laugh or shame them out of one such?
Why spend all this effort on a primitive myth cooked up by ignorant savages? Especially when there is actual knowledge available.
You might just as well get worked up about the colour of Sherlock Holmes' hat.
That is to be expected when the gods con game has been carefully honed for millennia. With the con coupled with the strong temptation to outsource one's thinking, it's amazing anyone escapes.
I think that the notion of souls is an ancient error that arose from ignorance of the brain and from a category error akin to asking where the fire goes when the fuel runs out.
These days it is just part of the religion scam.
So-called "holy books" clearly contain material that is at odds with reality as now understood.
A couple of examples:
Genesis uses the cosmology of the world as a bubble surrounded with water that was popular in the ancient middle east but is known to be rubbish.
A flood such as Noah's would...