What Religion are you?

[Aevis]

interesting to say that there is a good side in a world war.

[Andarvi]

While there were plenty of people on the "bad side" who, if they believed what they were doing was right, believed it was so because of a dogmatic duty, all I am saying is that regardless of whether people were "religious" by definition or not, religion as an institution and tool for manipulation by those in power was used on various levels to catalyze and perpetuate the wars (terrible run on sentence I'm too tired to correct).

Funny thing is, my grandfather was in the Navy in the Pacific in WWII, and from birth to death was a relatively pious Catholic. The majority of his stories from the war, outside of combat, revolved around drinking and getting laid.

interesting to say that there is a good side in a world war.

I see where you might go with this, munch on these and wait.
http://img1.uploadhouse.com/fileuplo...56de0820b0.jpg

[Plow]

interesting to say that there is a good side in a world war.

Yeah, we were way wrong in stopping Germany from taking over the world in the name of nationalism and "scientific" racial supremacy.

While there were plenty of people on the "bad side" who, if they believed what they were doing was right, believed it was so because of a dogmatic duty, all I am saying is that regardless of whether people were "religious" by definition or not, religion as an institution and tool for manipulation by those in power was used on various levels to catalyze and perpetuate the wars (terrible run on sentence I'm too tired to correct).

And so, in the end, it's blame religion for the bad, remove all credit from religion for any good. /shocked

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

I'm pretty sure more religious people were on the good side than the bad in WW2. There were a ton of Atheists on the good side too, for sure.

Again you've betrayed your ignorance by neatly portraying sides as either "good or bad." Stripping the complexities of all sides involved in the war down to "duh der bad Nazi Germans" and everyone else.

Hilarious, please keep it up.

[Plow]

The Japanese were pretty fucking incredibly evil at the time as well.

[Plow]

This is so awesome, religion is such a terrible thing that there were no "bad guys" in WW2.

[Senoska]

The Japanese were pretty fucking incredibly evil at the time as well.

Really? Don't make me break out my box, home dog.

edit: I'll fucking do it.

[Maguspk]

Religion is hurting you, and it will never help you.

lol

[Andarvi]

Yeah, we were way wrong in stopping Germany from taking over the world in the name of nationalism and "scientific" racial supremacy.




And so, in the end, it's blame religion for the bad, remove all credit from religion for any good. /shocked

For everyone person who uses it to do good, there is one who will use to do bad. For a nation or fundamentalist group that uses it as a reason to start or enter a war, there is one who uses it to enter a conflict already in progress. To dispute the relevance and benefit/detriment of religion, violent conflicts can be some of the hardest avenues to take.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

And so, in the end, it's blame religion for the bad, remove all credit from religion for any good. /shocked

At what point in WW2 was any speech on the level a George Bush "God told me we have to invade Iraq for world peace" made by a world leader in regard to WW2 or Germany? Having religious participants in a non-religious war, it was more a humanitarian and socio-economic war, is pretty fucking far removed from an actual religious war.

Hitler's crusade against the Jew's was more ethnic than religious.

How fucking dense are you?

[Faris]

hey hitler is an ok kinda guy according to neo.

[Senoska]

Er, no. But the people that were involved were .... you know... people....

But this is coming from a guy who thinks the holocaust was made up, right Firas? I guess Hitler is just chill with you and your peeps.

[Plow]

At what point in WW2 was any speech on the level a George Bush "God told me we have to invade Iraq for world peace" made by a world leader in regard to WW2 or Germany? Having religious participants in a non-religious war, it was more a humanitarian and socio-economic war, is pretty fucking far removed from an actual religious war.

Hitler's crusade against the Jew's was more ethnic than religious.

How fucking dense are you?

Did you forget that whole thing where you're the one that declared it a religious war?

[Faris]

Er, no. But the people that were involved were .... you know... people....

But this is coming from a guy who thinks the holocaust was made up, right Firas? I guess Hitler is just chill with you and your peeps.

I believe that the holocaust was exaggerated, plz dont go there, this thread will get locked.
its true we got only 7 jews on BG, but they got power and they'll use it! lol

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Did you forget that whole thing where you're the one that declared it a religious war?

Yeah you are dense. I never declared WW2 a religious war, you just failed to read the posts following up to it and made that assumption. Do yourself a favor and go re-read that whole back and forth and familiarize yourself with the point I was making to Correction ( hint: I said religious or not ).

[Plow]

Yeah you are dense. I never declared WW2 a religious war, you just failed to read the posts following up to it and made that assumption. Do yourself a favor and go re-read that whole back and forth and familiarize yourself with the point I was making to Correction ( hint: I said religious or not ).

Your argument was that for every person who has done good in the name of religion, there are 1000 who have done bad.

Then you used WWI and WWII as evidence.


It was beyond retarded, get over it, people need to stop making themselves look stupid by trying to look smart.

[MF Perm tha Fineass]

Improbable hyperbole? Show me anywhere, anything that shows where for every 1,000 people acting like Mother Theresa or the Dhalai Lama there aren't 10,000 people foaming at the mouth following Rush Limbaughs, Ayatollahs, Usama bin Ladens, Pat Robertsons and so on and so forth. Present or past.

You're trying to tell me that people,religious or not, have a tendency, or to be more honest, the mental capacity to follow the humble and pious over the corrupt and powerful?

What cereal do you eat and what kool-aid do you pour into it because that shit sounds scrum-diddly-umptious. I wish I was half as idealistic about the world as you.

I'm sorry you were saying?

[Plow]

In the end it doesn't matter if Firas believes the "good parts" or has a better interpretation because for every one of him there are 1,000 weak individuals who will try to mine influence and power from that book to make the world pay for their petty self-pity.

Oh shit son, my piss flew 2 inches farther than yours. Must've been the head start.


And before you try to say "but but but I changed the conversation entirely by saying that one time "religious or not, people are weak,"

"You can't prove god exists!" "You can't prove he doesn't!"

"You can't prove there aren't 1000 bin Ladens per 1 Mother Theresa" "You can't prove there are!"

Sure I can:

World War I - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

World War II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

hi

[Cow_k]

I just recently finished a class on the psychology of religion through Colorado State University and I have pages and pages of arguments about the positive and negative effects of religion. If I had a place to upload the material presented in class I would, but here's a brief overview of two areas presented in class lecture. I have many readings in PDF form on the other areas mentioned in the first set of quotes.

Religion is often described as a fundamentally moral and social phenomenon. As Spilka, Hill, Hunsberger and Gorsuch (2003) correctly point out, although the major world religions disagree on many, many things, they tend to agree on moral issues. For example, all major world religions in one way or another teach the Golden Rule and the command to love others as we love ourselves. Yet this kind of teaching is juxtaposed with people doing just the opposite in the name of the religion, such as was the case in the Crusades and on 9/11. After thinking about Mother Theresa and Osama Bin Laden, one might conclude that religion can be a very powerful force for good as well as for evil. So what has research revealed regarding religion, attitudes, and social behavior? In order to avoid redundancy, we’ll look at only two domains in lecture: prejudice and prosocial behavior/helping. The rest of the content is in your assigned readings, where you will find more coverage of prosocial behavior, as well as coverage of honesty and cheating, substance use and abuse, sexual behavior, clergy and domestic abuse, and criminal behavior and delinquency.

Prejudice

Our discussion of religious orientation started with the story of Gordon Allport and his hypothesis that although prejudice was correlated with church attendance, it likely is positively correlated with extrinsic religiosity and negatively correlated with intrinsic religiosity. Allport and Ross (1967) found partial evidence to support this hypothesis: Extrinsic religiosity positively correlated with prejudice, while Intrinsic religiousness was uncorrelated with prejudice. A large meta-analysis by Donahue (1985) found the same pattern: E was positively correlated with prejudice, but I was uncorrelated with prejudice.

Why is I uncorrelated with prejudice? One might think, as Allport did, that being intrinsically religious would make a person less prejudiced. One possibility is that there is not a linear relationship between I and prejudice, but instead a curvilinear relationship in which prejudice is highest for people with moderate I scores and lowest for people who score low and who score high on I. Allport and Ross (1967) cited 7 studies with data consistent with this hypothesis, and Gorsuch and Aleshire (1974) found in 20 of the 25 studies they reviewed that the data were consistent with that kind of curvilinear relationship.

Studies within the last 10 years also find I to be uncorrelated with prejudice. One study (Beck & Miller, 2000) found that high scorers on I were less likely to make quick judgments about people’s religious or moral orientation. One study (Fulton, Gorsuch & Maynard, 1999) suggested that I was positively correlated with negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians when the domain of morally based feelings was assessed, but not when any other attitude domains were assessed (this is consistent with a “love the sinner, hate the sin” philosophy). To summarize, I is uncorrelated with measures of prejudice (although Donahue and Nielson [2005] suggest that devoutly religious individuals prefer to “keep their distance” from people with alternative moral lifestyles). Extrinsic religiousness does tend to correlate positively with prejudice.

Prosocial Behavior and Helping

The Paloutzian text reviews Darley and Batson’s (1973) classic “From Jerusalem to Jericho” study as well as London’s (1970) research on Christians who had hid Jews from the Nazis during World War II. Paloutzian goes on to take the opposite approach and look at studies of religious factors that facilitate harming. I’ll refer you to the text for Paloutzian’s fine discussion on these topics.

But what else do we know beyond what Paloutzian included in his review? Some scholars point to historical evidence of a link between religious faith and helping behavior. For example:
*Christian groups invented nonprofit hospitals and established religious orders with the purpose of staffing them.
*Many pandemics throughout history would have been far worse if not for the primarily religious women and men who stayed to care for the sick rather than flee to the countryside.
*The Nobel Peace Prize is disproportionately awarded to individuals motivated by strong religious faith (e.g., Jimmy Carter, the Dalai Lama, Elie Wiesel, Desmond Tutu, Mother Theresa)

Gallup Polls periodically assess religion and helping. A 1984 survey showed highly spiritually committed people to be more than twice as likely as noncommitted people to currently serve in volunteer social service activities; this same result was found in later polls (Colasanto, 1989; Wuthnow, 1994). Research by Snyder and colleagues has found that religious commitment is strongly correlated with planned helping, such as in an AIDS program. However, evidence also suggests that religious people are less inclined to volunteer when people in need behave in ways that violate their religious standards (Jackson & Esses, 1997; Thurston, 2000).

If anyone wants any more information I can go digging through stuff for more examples of good versus bad effects of religion. Everyone here uses blanket statements far too much. While the ideas of extrinsic and intrinsic are starting to get sort of dated, there are multiple branches of every belief be it Christian, Islam, Atheist; all with varying degrees of extreme or non-extreme behavior. To say that all Christians, Islam etc. cause world wars etc. is irresponsible.

[Cow_k]

Also, I recommend that people go to this website: Faith and Reason

Also from class lecture:

"The website was designed to accompany a documentary that aired on PBS about ten years ago. The state of the scientific data described by the site is becoming outdated (e.g., it aired just prior to the Human Genome Project), but the issues raised regarding faith and reason are entirely relevant today."

One example of one of the scientists influenced in “Faith and Reason,” God is not the result of a scientific experiment, thus science cannot prove or disprove God’s existence or any other fundamentally religious or spiritual assumptions about the nature of reality.