Why are religious people more disgustingly stupid, barbaric, and evil?

[Jayhawker Soule]

Not at all.

An atheist can´t do anything motivated because he is an atheist.

How truly convenient.

 

[SaintAugustine]

Western religions tend to be very motivated by fear. Fear is one of the worst forms of motives one may have, and it is at root of many people´s beliefs.

Many of this most fanatical believers are actually in simple denial to the fact that they don´t actually believe and are afraid of dying or gong to hell. Thus, the overcompenzate things and do completely out of place stupid pronunciations and deeds.

gee, I wish I had written that.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

gee, I wish I had written that.

Too bad.

 

[predavlad]

Bigoted rubbish.

Instead of calling me a bigot, wouldn't you rather prove me wrong?

I am a very reasonable person and willing to accept fact based arguments. I provided the best I could do with the amount of knowledge I have.

But instead of actually refuting my arguments, you insulted me. Isn't that the definition of bigotry?

Oh wait - I forgot that religious people don't like neither facts nor reason.

Now that you can call bigoted, and I would like to apologize for it - I couldn't help myself. I just wanted to show you what actual religious bigotry is like.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

Instead of calling me a bigot, wouldn't you rather prove me wrong?

I'd rather just put you on my ignore list where you belong. Gloat about that if you wish.

 

[Road Warrior]

because ignorance is a virtue and knowledge the 8th and most deadly sin

Is that from Richard Dawkins or PZ Myers?

 

[Kathryn]

I agree with you mostly. But I do think that dogma can affect a person's actions
for better or worse, depending upon the person & the cultural environment.
How much? Hard to say

Sure it can have an effect, but it's simply no excuse for bad behavior.

"I hate rude behavior in a man - won't tolerate it." Capt. Call in Lonesome Dove

 

[Kathryn]

I don't think the lack of religion can drive someone to do anything.

But for religious people it's a totally different story.

What motivates good people to mutilate the genitalia of their children? Ask the Jews who circumcise their children, and Muslims girls who are forced to have their clitoris cut off.

I couldn't find one non-religious (has to be sane and with decent morals) person who - when seeing a newborn child(boy or girl) - the first thing he would think is : "Ah, this bit here is an extra. It has to be cut off immediately".

It's even worse for religious people who say that they were made in the image of god. Apparently the image of god is imperfect and needs to be adjusted.

This is just one example, I could find hundreds of them, but this is the most ... graphic.


I completely agree that the responsibility lies with the individual. But you need to find the root cause of the problem as well. The ONLY reason a good person would consider cutting mutilating his sons/daughters genitalia is because of their religion.

Let me try to make a comparison to atheism as well, to not be unfair.
What would drive an atheist to commit genocide only against priests, and people practicing religion(for example)?
First of all, any person that commits genocide - doesn't matter against who or for what reasons - is evil (let's leave war out of this)

Let's take Enver Hoxha. Where did his hatred for religion come from? Well, multiple reasons. One was that he was considering religion divided the country, and fueled conflicts. Also, he considered the Vatican to be an agent of fascism.

So his extreme anti religion policy was a reaction to religions actions, not of his lack of belief in a god. And that was my point.




Obviously this is not true for all religions, but for the 3 religions I am most accustomed with (Christianity, Judaism and Islam) it is 100% true, and there is enough historical and contemporary evidence to support my claim.

I disagree completely. Atheists have justified horrific behavior (genocide, torture, etc) with no sense of religion. So have religious people. The fault, in my opinion, lies within human nature.

As for your apparent justification of genocide by atheists ("because of their hatred of religion - so it's still religion's fault") - I find that view absolutely abhorrent.

 

[predavlad]

I'd rather just put you on my ignore list where you belong. Gloat about that if you wish.

No, I don't feel the need to gloat. I'm just astonished.

 

[predavlad]

I disagree completely. Atheists have justified horrific behavior (genocide, torture, etc) with no sense of religion. So have religious people. The fault, in my opinion, lies within human nature.

As for your apparent justification of genocide by atheists ("because of their hatred of religion - so it's still religion's fault") - I find that view absolutely abhorrent.

I am not trying to find a justification for genocide, and did not blame religion for it. I specified before (maybe you missed it): "any person that commits genocide - doesn't matter against who or for what reasons - is evil"

My point was that the evil people who were atheists did not have their lack of belief in god as an underlying cause for their actions.

The same thing cannot be said about religious people. Actually the opposite can be stated - that religion taken to the extreme was definitely one of the underlying causes, or at least was used as a justification for wicked things.


Sorry for not explaining it clearly enough earlier, my writing skills still lack a bit of finesse.

 

[Revoltingest]

Why are religious people more disgustingly stupid, barbaric, and evil?

They actually aren't.
They only look that way when compared to us atheists.
It's rough being so intelligent, highly educated, good look'n, enlightened, civilized, & downright good.
People resent us for these threatening traits. So if ever you see us behave badly, we do this on purpose,
just to embiggen your self esteem. That's how much we care.

 

[The Wizard]

Because people see what they EXPECT to see thru their own prejudices.

Perfect answer. Even besides the OP 100 ft paintbrush generalization. What one thinks and percieves about people they will find a supporting experience for it round every corner... imo.

 

[punkdbass]

how does this thread get 8 pages of posts while half of the threads I make about things I actually want to debate and learn more about get barely any posts? lol

 

[Bob Dixon]

how does this thread get 8 pages of posts while half of the threads I make about things I actually want to debate and learn more about get barely any posts? lol

Because people don't want to discuss serious things.

 

[SaintAugustine]

how does this thread get 8 pages of posts while half of the threads I make about things I actually want to debate and learn more about get barely any posts? lol

I am gonna find one of your threads..and debate whatever view you have

 

[Me Myself]

How truly convenient.

I guess it is?

Let me put it in this way:

How much do you have in common with other people that don´t believe in unicorns?

Not believing in unicorns has ever motivated you to do something?

 

[punkdbass]

I am gonna find one of your threads..and debate whatever view you have

Bring it on

 

[InformedIgnorance]

I would suggest that:

Stupidity is poorly defined at the best of times, highly subjective and often not a useful means of differentiation between those who emphasise faith and those who emphasise reason. There is nothing which suggests that those who have faith in the supernatural are stupid, instead the worst (sound) criticism of their group as a whole in terms of rationality is their dogmatically delimited critical examination. On the whole, faith involves the suspension of rationality to one extent or another - some aspects of faith do not contradict reason and insurmountable evidence, yet many claims made by many religions do just that - the worst that can be said for such aspects of faith is that they are not rational if they do not adhere to restrictions of logic and rationality or are irrational if they actually contradict such restrictions (without stating that they are not subject to such restraints - in which case they automatically become non rational regardless of how obviously logical their claim).

Barbarism is a subjective perspective that has more to do with cultural norms deviating from those that the perceiver holds or comfortable with - rather that religious norms per se (the two are often combined however and therefore difficult to separate). Where a religion holds norms that significantly deviate from standard (particularly archaic norms within conservative religious communities) those religious communities may exhibit behaviour others call barbaric. That is a result of entrenched norms of behaviour suspended from critical evaluation and subsequent change, this largely stems from unwillingness to apply the same rational processes to those norms espoused by the religious community (most of the time), rather than the religion itself.

Evil is a subjective perception of the characteristics of a situation, individual, event, (in)action or outcome with regards to how that individual holds the characteristics to conform to their own established matrix of values - primarily these centre around key issues such as adherence to some dogma (often religious or cultural in nature) as well as approaches such as a stakeholder based analysis in determining equity, consent and so forth. As with barbarism, the community plays as large a role in identifying the sort of characteristics that will characterise their community, the individuals within and so forth - however the role of particular philosophies (such as forgiveness for sins or the highly external locus of control implied by belief in a divine master plan) can actually act to allow gross breaches of the supposed norms of the religion because individual responsibility is mitigated.

 

[gnomon]

There is no good - or even coherent - answer to the question: its sole redeeming quality is that it's more honest than many.

Pentamethyldiethylenetriamine

 

[Kathryn]

I am not trying to find a justification for genocide, and did not blame religion for it. I specified before (maybe you missed it): "any person that commits genocide - doesn't matter against who or for what reasons - is evil"

My point was that the evil people who were atheists did not have their lack of belief in god as an underlying cause for their actions.

The same thing cannot be said about religious people. Actually the opposite can be stated - that religion taken to the extreme was definitely one of the underlying causes, or at least was used as a justification for wicked things.


Sorry for not explaining it clearly enough earlier, my writing skills still lack a bit of finesse.

Well, sometimes my comprehension skills lack finesse as well!