God is a noun

[masta247]

Sorry I based those numbers on my country.

Ok I have to agree that America is religious because there are many religions there, I only read about Christians.

By the way when I said atheist I don't mean people who are not religious but people who are against God, against any higher spiritual existence. I met maybe 1 or 2 people like those in my life.

 

[Glockmatic]

Science is not education. Science is a part of education.

So it IS education.

Education is also relgion, philosophy etc.

I'm basing education from what was taught to me in school, and religion was never taught to me. The only religion taught to me was Taoism/Buddhism, and its debatable whether that is a religion or not.

European countries and Japan are pure religious.

Look at what I posted above.

Of course religion is not as important as it was because of new modern values implemented by America and western european countries. There are many more things to care for but still people are religious.

It's not as important because people can now question religion without fear of being burned at the stake or stoned to death.

 

[Preach]

a couple of cents, uh, norway got a church controlled by the government. every child born is automatically registered. i am, for example. i am not, however, known to be religious. not a lot of people will go to church. by and large the religious community in norway consists of the few old people from "the old world", religious in a very traditional orthodox sense, the people who have immigrated, people who have too small a head and too few thoughts in it to not be overwhelmed by the thought of "the universe" and avoids it at all times and therefore just hangs onto the god theory for inner peace, and people who are actually religious. the latter is so very rare though. in my lifetime i have physically met only two people my age who honestly believed in god.

norway is not a part of the eu but it's another western country. i wouldn't be surprised if the french were very religious. the brits are fox-hunting savages, they pray to at least three gods. the dutch are irreligious. but apart from those i think the same trend follows most people who have played god of war on a playstation.

 

[_carmi]

God is a noun. What is important is the significance we give to that noun and what it means to us.

A ring is only metal and some diamonds or something until you give a meaning to it.

 

[S O F I]

^LOL. Reminds me of a social-psych class I took freshman year. I'm glad you're taking what you learn and applying it in discussions here.

 

[_carmi]

^LOL. Reminds me of a social-psych class I took freshman year. I'm glad you're taking what you learn and applying it in discussions here.

I did not apply anything I learned on this post unless I did it unconsciously lol

 

[Duke]

God is a noun. What is important is the significance we give to that noun and what it means to us.

A ring is only metal and some diamonds or something until you give a meaning to it.

A bit of insight from carmi here. Only four lines, but hey, we're getting somewhere.

 

[masta247]

Sorry for not responding but I couldn't find time.
I think we went kinda offtopic before Carmi came in.

But to continue that OT science is like 1/5 education.
For example I've been taught around 30 subjects at school (from elementary to high school) and only 3-5 are science subjects (maths, chemistry, physics, geography, biology) while most others were humanistic (5 languages, introduction into knowledge about societies then sociology, knowledge about culture, religion, ethics, knowledge about religions, philosophy, world history and Polish/European history, knowledge about human and human in society - elements of psychology etc. etc.)
Now I'm going to a totally science related college so it's another story tho.
Whole education consists of many many subjects that often collide with science and vice versa. Proven philosophies often collide with science not to even mention relgion/ethics and other humanistic subjects.

Taoism and Buddhism are systems with really good ethic and philosophical values. And they are religions.

I took a look on that wikipedia map and what makes me think is that my country (Poland) is the most religious in central-western europe. I wasn't even that aware of that, I thought that whole Europe is nearly as religious but I see countries like 30-40% less religious in western europe (and it doesn't have anything to do with wealth as you can see). I wonder why is that. I know that nearly all people here are religious but when I look back to the history few hundreds years ago we weren't religious at all. It grew in Polish nation for years till this day.
Also youth these days has totally different values - less deep.
Religion comes with age usually. Once you become less revolutionary, when you get calmer, nicer and you need something to put your faith in you pick a religion.

 

[Preach]

Religion comes with age usually. Once you become less revolutionary, when you get calmer, nicer and you need something to put your faith in you pick a religion.

not me

 

[masta247]

not me

Damn again I'm generalizing too much. I mean that's how it happens oftenly.

 

[Preach]

haha. ya i got what you meant i'm just stubborn. i have already decided i'm not ever believing in god. i am not prejudice, i have judged it and made a judgment after the fact. i will not take part in that fairy tale state of being alive. i'd much rather end my life. it would feel like being demoted.

something like bhuddism/taoism would be the thing for me, and only because i believe they have come the closest to painting a picture of what happens when energy flow in the universe, compared to other religions.

 

[Duke]

Damn again I'm generalizing too much. I mean that's how it happens oftenly.

I know of very, very, VERY few people that actually became religious when they get older. They may pick up their faith again, different matter entirely. Almost all religious people were brought up with it and to put it bluntly, they "don't know any better".

And on your previous post, saying that wealth hasn't got much to do with it, I think you're quite wrong. Look at the more religious countries on the planet and you'll find that the ones that are very religious are "poorer" (or "less wealthy", if you will) than the countries that aren't that religious (anymore.)
I think you do have a point when you say that materialism contributes to that. But materialism also erodes the sense of community and family in the western world. The way we (westerners) treat the elderly for example. We put them in retirement homes, practically anywhere else in the world the children take care of their elders when they get old. In that respect it can be argued that religion helps create a strong sense of community, although you can argue against that as well (community sense arising from necessity, poor conditions etc.).

We also musn't forget that there are a wide variety of ways in how one can "be" religious and in what measure it affects the daily life of people. There is nothing wrong with being religious "an sich", no matter how much of hardcore ayatollah you are, when it starts to piss me off is when religion starts to cloud a person's view of the world around them. When they try to shove their beliefs onto others, and when they expect or even try to force their beliefs onto others or when they expect others to believe just as they do.


And oftenly isn't a word.

 

[Preach]

what if religion is a human gene?

imagine life from the eyes and brain of a fox. you don't ponder on great questions a lot do you. you see a bird, it's either execute action a, b or c, cancel, or stay idle.

imagine life from a monkey's eyes. chimps have higher intellectuality than the aforementioned fox. they can remember things, and associate a high number of words to their respective meanings. still, one might argue that a monkey can not question its own actions, only carry them out and experience them.

one thing that the human of today has that the cave men lacked was the part of the brain that let's you simulate various situations before they happened, inside your head. this is what allows you to close your eyes and "see things". generally, our ability to comprehend pre-, and post-cognitive heightened. if you compare a chimp to a fox, you see that even though the ability to think on a higher level is present with the chimps, and the various functions that the brain can serve are more advanced, they still do not control their own existence. an angry chimp _will_ throw poo if that's what it thinks is best at the moment. there would be no way for the chimp to stop this emotion.

religion seems to me the same way. it would take a lot to make a chimp stop throwing poo if it has done so since birth, as it would take a lot to make a a religious person an atheist unless they experience something that give them a reason to question god. god is what drives them. the monkeys must have something similar that drives their poo throwing. is it god? or is it simply that the need for finding a religion is a genetic trait that the human race have acquired in order to maintain with our excelling brain power trying to drive us nuts.

just a high thought.

 

[masta247]

And oftenly isn't a word.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=oftenly

I got used to it because of my American friends from SH


Strange thing is that we may be on the same point and on the same side with few things but we don't realise that.
The thing is our perception of how religious people see God is different. When I mean a religious man I don't mean a fanatic or even a person who prays everyday and goes to church every week. I mean a person who believes in some higher spiritual things that rule in life.

I know many people who start to believe when they get older. Actually I think all older people I ever met are Christians (except my grandfather but that's because of his own experiences in life).

I think our different views come from our different experiences. We live in slightly different societies, I see they are really different religion-wise. I'm really sceptic about Christians and all others. I'm the closest to the Zen buddhism philosphy but I tend to believe in some Christian stuff. I don't believe in the Bible tho so I'm not defending my beliefs. I just have different experiences with religious people. Actually I'm surrounded by them all the time.


There are most wealthy religious countries and less wealthy.
I think that poverty does in fact increase peoples' faith in religions but it's not relevant to this case these days I think.
If there are wars, conflicts, diseases people believe more.
But now I know as many rich and wealthy religious people as I see poorer ones. Also Poland is not a poor country - I'd say it's just average or slightly above now, especially compared to poorer, less religious countries like Ukraine, Slovakia etc.
Italy is also on top if it comes to amount of Christians.
Then Brazil is one of those most religious countries - I have to agree that average living conditions are not perfect there.
So I guess that those conditions don't affect the faith factor THAT much.

 

[masta247]

@Preach:

I think it's the evolution of human brain that gives us so many trivial problems to discuss for weeks and still don't know the one and only proper answer. If we were less intelligent we wouldn't talk right here right now, we would be running the streets, kicking some asses and chasing women without saying a word. I think the more our minds will evolve, the more strange problems we will have and more strange things will start in our minds.

 

[Jokerman]

it would take a lot to make a chimp stop throwing poo if it has done so since birth, as it would take a lot to make a religious person an atheist

Which is great proof that we share 98.8% of our genes with chimpanzees.

But what would it take to make a religious person stop throwing poo, I wonder?

 

[_carmi]

A bit of insight from carmi here. Only four lines, but hey, we're getting somewhere.

better than nothing right?