"Smorgasbord" Religion, Being of a Faith, and the Personal Journey

Paladin said:
The irony of self transcendence or personal transformation is that from all accounts it is necessary to be something before you are nothing.
Consider those at a level of development that depends on an external locus of control for functioning within the community.
Also it is intriguing to me what happens when a child begins to grow up without going through a healthy separation stage.
I have watched people with Narcissistic personality disorder try to function in groups and the dynamic is painful to watch.
Conversely, those persons who have established a healthy sense of self seem to be in a better position to let go of the image of self thus seeing beyond the created and self sustained ego personality.

I also note that nearly every religion has those members who have experienced and written about this experience.
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What kind of a person, religion, textbook, or community regards and treats people as if they are nothing??
 
inuk said:
Thank you PoO, its good to be talking again, though I never was 'away', I had continued reading.

You raise so many interesting points that its difficult to respond to all of them. And this focus on the terminology of belief should have been nailed long ago. I understand you think I have a 'belief' in the scientific method that is akin to the religious 'belief'. I disagree. I see the scientific method as a tool that can be applied to absolutely everything, as in the previous Darwin quote, but it can only deliver hypothesis not belief. The more bits of data that stack up to support a hypothesis the closer the body of it can be seen to resemble belief. In that sense I have many beliefs. My use of the English language may be sadly lacking, or perhaps we are just doing what we come here to do, beat some ideas up. I think the best I can say is that I have no belief lens of a religious or supernatural nature.

Also I am not here to proselytise a religion of one. I am here to beat up ideas with other like-minded people. Of all the people in this world that have religious belief there would be only a fraction of a percent I could find no common ground with. And these would constitute the lunatics any sane person would be hard pressed to give audience. I evidently, though not deliberately, seem to have a bit of a bible thumpers fervour in my writing style that seems to mask my true ambivalence. And if you look at some of my thoughts on cosmology and theoretical physics in the science sections I can be deemed as romantic as any spiritualist. Its about what floats your boat. What you see as important.

Where as you have many ways to relate your spiritual side to value that I can only applaud I am overwhelmed mostly by the cruelty and suffering I see being meted out by belief systems. And when I weigh it against the value you assign as making belief worthwhile to mankind, my scale of value falls the other way. I have actually had the phrase "throw the baby out with the bathwater" levelled at me on more than one occasion on just this point. But I say as far as I can guess things will not change, (ie: the billions of hideous events that result directly from religious thinking), without a rapid and wholesale dismissal of belief by humanity. That to me includes all the pink fluffy, romantic or sexy religion too, so yes I would advocate throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Though you correctly say some other ideology would take up the slack that would become the next challenge. We have to evolve, or die out. As I see it we are now a single massive tribe, we require a shared language of co-operation that meets the challenges ahead. Religions are too imature and too Alpha aggressive to create anything but a totalitarian hell. I do not think for a moment humanity is capable of such a transformation. Indeed I am pretty certain that before I die many millions more will have died with God, Allah or Beallzebub written on the bullets. You seem to think we would find other excuses to kill each other if we had no religious beliefs. But I wonder if evrybody viewed the usefulness of belief as I do whether that rationality would not change us so radically we would tolerate no other excuse either. That is all I can do though, wonder.

As Bob Marley is often quoted "Have no fear of atomic energy, none of us can stop the times". We are a living organism, we change, adapt and evolve. To state that previous tribal or animistic societies always managed their resources better than we do is a misleading and innacurate. Many historical societies and empires have raped resources in an eventually suicidal manner. And other factors such as war and natural disaster need to be figured in. Progress is our natural evolution and that evolution has given us the abilty to now manipulate the processes itself. With the full use of extant technology we could exploit resources to feed, clothe and house over twice the current global population with current developed world luxury. Our inibility to do so is a deliberate handicap imposed by the Alpha male groups of leaders, political and religious, that are only in it for themselves. I think people need to embrace technology and our global citizenship and stand up to these gangs of hoodlums we call our leaders. One of the reasons we do not is the psychological use of religion to accept the unacceptable. I know that for you, Salty and countless others religion has value but, to my thinking, it is religion that is preventing the kind of progress we need, want and deserve.

But I have to go out now....so I'l have to leave it there for now....
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Tao, (sorry, I like your first name better), your position seems to be that if atheists/areligious folks ran the world, we'd have an era of greater peace and tolerance. The record of the 20th century says that ain't so. Remember Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot of Cambodia- those mass Commie killers? WWI & II, which took countless lives weren't primarily about religious ideas. Sure, Hitler had some immense religious hatreds, but the man also did to homosexuals & gypsies what he did to Jews. Human hatred & intolerance on a grand scale in modern times has typically had little to do with religious ideas. earl
 
path_of_one said:
I think partially what is curious to me is the difference between religions which seem to emphasize individual transcendence, with the support of community, versus group transcendence. For example, the notion in Christianity of the members being part of the Body of Christ- that the group transcends together- rather than the church being the support for the individual (though for many, it is). I don't know where I'm going with this... I am rambling. :eek:
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There's no-one better at rambling :)

And an example of the former perhaps...I found this in "Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi" :

"One primary Soto teaching method is reflected in Hongzhi's frequent encouragement that practitioners embody the teaching with independence, illumining fully on their own. The awareness that nobody can experience the truth for another led to the characteristic Soto style of usually not giving explicit directions, leaving the students to realise personally their own inmost nature."

s.
 
Snoopy said:
...I found this in "Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi" :
"The awareness that nobody can experience the truth for another led to the characteristic Soto style of usually not giving explicit directions, leaving the students to realise personally their own inmost nature."​
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Hi Snippy,

How's this different from providing a rationale for shutting down all discourse and discussion?
 
A few brief thoughts...

I don't think it is a misnomer to say social science can be a science. The breadth of the field is so great that some of it is technically humanities/arts and some of it is science.

Anthropology, for example, encompasses human evolution, genetics, optimal foraging, and various types of modeling that are clearly science and deal with measurable, observable phenomena. However, it also encompasses theories about religion, identity, and so forth that one cannot measure objectively. In the sciences, while one can measure things, these data do not always directly correlate to a theory. Creativity is needed, and in interpreting the data, one is being somewhat subjective in how the objective reality is understood.

For some reason, people seem to want science to be neat and tidy and it just isn't. It can be messy.

Inuk/Tao- from what I've gathered from your last post, it is more your presentation than your actual thought process that claims surity. I think we're all kind of getting hung up on the terminology, but Salty (sorry, not Snoopy! LOL :eek:) pointed out the distinction between belief system and belief, to which you responded that you meant (more narrowly) religious or supernatural belief. So I think it's all much clearer than mud now. :)

I would say quite firmly that it is not just a hypothesis or even theory that humans would replace religion with some other ideology that allows us to justifiably kill one another. The problem is not which ideology or what it is about (the supernatural, "race," politics, nationality, whatever) but rather the underlying tendency of humans to form exclusionary groups and justify discrimination and hatred with ideology. As someone else pointed out (Earl, I think?), Communism did not end killing people and folks suffered just as much under totalitarian regimes that were atheist as they did under ones that were theist.

I think we need to stop looking at the "system" and "ideology" as the problem, and start looking at human nature- we easily replace religion for nationalism for race politics for discrimination based on sexuality and gender... ad infinitum.

Something I do not understand, but I can observe it happening every time I turn on the news. And its more subtle forms, less obvious in their damage and pain- gossip, slander, trying to put oneself higher than another, our tendency to form clubs and fraternities and any sort of group to which others must try to enter, and we have the power to block them...

What is just everyday rudeness and selfishness, snobbery and disdain in ordinary people becomes murder and torture under the right circumstances or in the minds of people who are emotionally and mentally unstable. I believe this is part of what Jesus meant when he said that to harbor anger against another (without legitimate cause) is to murder- that in our minds, these things go together, just as lusting after another is mental adultery.

I argue that religion has been useful, just as it has also been used to justify inhumane actions. So too with politics, economics, and all the other trappings of human social life. The problem lies within us.

My hope is that I see the goodness too, in individuals and emergent in groups. The mob mentality leads to, well, mobs... but it also can cause everyone in a concert hall to weep with the beauty of a piece of music. The worst of ourselves carries the potential for the best of ourselves... and vice versa... which is why diligence in having a beneficial, wholesome consciousness is so necessary. I have hope that either we will evolve the spiritual-emotional-mental capacity necessary for global peace and sustainability, or the earth will regulate us and we will depopulate to a level at which we are once again sustainable as a species. I think it will all be OK in the end. But in the meantime, I deeply feel that my purpose is in alleviating suffering- of myself and of others. And I have found that many religions have contributed to me bettering this capacity- so I find their potential to bring out the best in myself and others... just as people find their potential to bring out the worst.
 
Paladin said:
I'm not sure I understand your question, could you expand on that thought a bit?
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The focus appeared to be on how an individual sees and regards themselves. I asked a question with focus on how a person sees and regards others.
 
Yeah Path, only when an ology or an ism begins to promote us vs. them thinking does it lead down the road of intolerance. When we see them as us, there is peace.:) earl
 
ciberpy said:
The focus appeared to be on how an individual sees and regards themselves. I asked a question with focus on how a person sees and regards others.
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Hopefully others are seen as non different than ourselves. This is part of a healthy sense of self as I understand it.
Even a curmudgeonly introvert like myself values others, because I value love.
 
ciberpy said:
What kind of a person, religion, textbook, or community regards and treats people as if they are nothing??
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Any legit religion that begins with a non-illusory foundation. The underlying question is how we treat nothing? As usual Simone cannot be read by those into feel good political correctness, but for those with the stomach for it, she reveals a great deal here.

"Charity. To love human beings in so far as they are nothing. That is to love them as God does.” Simone Weil
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Christianity for example is a religion based on love for the fallen human condition and providing the means for freedom from it. Christendom in contrast looks down on this nothingness as immoral. How many really understand what is meant by loving the sinner and not the sin? Do we know that as we think this we are nothing and incapabe of this quality of love?

Simone is right of course but it is difficult to appreciate simply because we haven't experienced our nothingness and regard nothingness as demeaning. Yet this is what Jesus means by letting the dead bury their dead.

This kind of respect is not condescending since when genuine, it is done through the experience of ones own nothingness. It has nothing to do with blindly following societal standards

I remember reading an account of a man who may have been the greatest man of the twentieth century. A young student who held him in awe finally had the nerve to approach him and admitted that she couldn't relax in front of him because she felt totally inadequate. He responded telling her that yes compared to him she is sh-t but yet he compared to certain others is also sh-t. So you see we are the same. She left bewildered but in an hour or so came back with a smile on her face. She understood.
 
Netti-Netti said:
Hi Snippy,

How's this different from providing a rationale for shutting down all discourse and discussion?
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It's not the be-all-and-end-all I suppose. So how would you describe your practice?

s.
 
So sorry Salty for being two pages behind the flow,

Saltmeister said:
Religion isn't divisive or prejudiced in nature. Religious activity is only divisive and prejudiced when the people who serve as stewards and leaders think they have to run their religious communities in a divisive and prejudiced manner, based on what they think is loyalty to their religion. It's a cultural struggle. Adherents of a religion have to learn how to be less divisive and prejudiced. It's a bit like the cultural struggle with racism and feminism. Religion, pursued the wrong way, can become a kind of spiritual racism.
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I cannot agree that religion is not divisive or prejudiced by its very nature. When religion is not an utterly selfish individual paradigm, which can have two people at loggerheads for a lifetime over who said what 1000s of years ago, it becomes a group one. There as many, per head of adherents, competing schools of Buddhism as there are in Christianity. Each with its followers happy to believe it is they that have the truth. We cannot help but continually be divided if we keep elevating what is subjective experience primed by a carefully constructed philosophy of certitude, or believing even that certitude is possible.
For me I can only ask what is real in the material world we inhabit and can actually influence. Prayer does not work. Hope does not work. Counting beads does not work. Wheeling your brain damaged child to Lourdes does not work. And prostrating symbolic begging every step of a 1000 mile crawl to Mecca is sheer insanity.
I have a Polish girlfriend who is an observant Catholic in most regards. Last summer she spent her vacation time from he poorly paid drudgery here in the UK as an 'east European migrant', and used it to walk a long way on a pilgrimage to faint in religious ecstasy at a painting of the Black Madonna. By chance Michael Palin, (a former member of the monty python team), had made a TV documentary which while in Poland visited this shrine of iconoclastic idolatry. It is nothing but a gold festooned disneyland with one attraction, but none the less is a Catholic 'honeypot' and it took over 10% of my girlfriends annual income to be allowed this experience. Disney movies can be seen to be the gospels that like children they look at again and again and again, mesmerised. Now if you think that healthy human behaviour I just cannot agree. It is extraordinary behaviour.
I think you and PoO and a few others here may have completely harmless and in some respects self-benefiting notions of what belief is and act like you speak for all belief. But most belief is nothing like that which you have. I would guess that your expression of belief is as rare on the face of the planet as my atheism. There are billions of little, and not so little, tortures meeted out across the world every day in the name of belief. Most belief is nothing like yours. Most belief is a prison. A prison of mind, of body and of dignity.
A belief in a god or superstition that is in someway 'intervensionist' is what matters and this is what sells religious belief. Science is willing to study every claim of such inervention and has done. The results of every such 'credible' claim under the microscope shows no effect, placebo effect and very many frauds. Not one piece of evidence swings even a few percent toward supporting any supernatural claim. Without intervention even if there was a big guy in the sky he clearly is not watching. There is no meaningful to us creator being or force that interacts magically with us, We were not created by such a thing but evolved from bacteria and virus and phage and other plasmids now lost in the evolutionary mists billions of years ago. The left handed amino acids and some protiens that make life possible are to be found in meteorites and spectral analysis in deep space. The building blocks of life are created by the fusion engines of stars. Not by omnipotent sheiks in the sky. Not by benificent forces that will allow us to reincarnate till we are all gods ourselves. Accepting the science that allows me to conclude that is not a religious nor a philosophical endeavour but an unbiased objective and repeatable one.





Even if it is true that what people believe in doesn't exist at all, why is it then pointless to continue believing? You're assuming that the existence of a believed-in entity is more important than the ethics of believing in it.
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Why tie up and confuse ethics with fictional paradigms? Belief systems evolved under the control of groups of Alpha males who required a degree of social cohesion to prosper themselves. A tribal leader ceases to be one if he beats all his tribe to death. The secret of getting rich is to have many people earning for you and to use them to expand your circle of exploitation. This is all just basic common sense and I do not mean to talk down to you but sometimes basic common sense needs to be emphasised. The milling pond of tribal jostle that divides our fields and quarries, our factories and forrests all have a common internal ethic. But this is human ethic not a belief ethic. And that ethic is usurped by countless paradigms according overwhelmingly to the paradigm of the resident alpha male groups. If you accept all religious belief as I do, being fictional imaginings, the religion becomes a racket selling fiction. I like fiction too sometimes, we all do, but it should never be a substitute for full conciousceness.

You want something that isn't just a creation of one's imagination, but something that has evidence for its own existence, something objectively real. You're not interested in the ethics of believing in it. You want the real thing.
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Only if it is lite. But seriously, there is no place for emotional sentiment in looking at the ecology of existance. There are enough patterns of pure observation to get a good handle on what does or does not happen in actuality. Our religious beliefs are nothing more than complex paradigms rooting us to a tribal structure. They use the whole gamut of trickery and coercion without cease for generation after generation. Leaving us always hoping our next Alpha would not be bad as the one we have. We need the ethics that can be found throughout religion not to be seen as god given rights or ideals but as human rights upheld in a common law for all.

The lens through which I see the reality of my own creative imagination, is one that I enjoy wearing.;):cool: My beliefs have sentimental value. To me it doesn't matter whether or not it's objectively real. What matters is the ethics of believing in whatever it is that I believe. It is a matter of devotion. There is a sense of nobility and honour in choosing my lens, my beliefs and giving my devotion and loyalty to them. It's like being a samurai warrior.
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I appreciate that and regularly enjoy escapism myself. But is it not then a frivolous excursion ? And, however fractionally, a quiet endorsement of every belief?


But back to the lens metaphor -- if my glasses make me think I am seeing a beautiful woman, I might as well continue wearing them!:D:eek:;):rolleyes:
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lol, yeh..... but are you prepared to wake up to a diseased and ugly old hag?:eek::D



Science defines objective reality but not subjective reality. Objective reality is unambiguous in what you can measure and observe.

Arts, humanities and social sciences are the exploration of subjective realities. Subjective reality is ambiguous in what you can measure and observe. With subjective reality, what you "see" is not necessarily what I "see."
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And I would say that there are many things some here claim as subjective only that can be viewed objectively.








Indeed there is no universally observable phenomenon of a god/God, but that doesn't mean there isn't one. That's why it's a matter of faith and one's imagination and experience.
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I.E. Fiction, instilled or embraced.


One can accept that you have no "belief system," but to say you have no beliefs in my reality would be ridiculous because you are human.
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I have no beliefs that are verifiably false when exposed to objective analysis.



But then what about you, yourself and inuk? Does inuk exist? There you are. Where there are humans, there are beliefs. Lol, I do what Buddhists can only dream about... I reincarnate!! I did not make this name up, inuk, and I need to change it.





No, beliefs are not a necessarily condition to be human, but you have beliefs because you are human.
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Tempted there to say "no sh*t Sherlock"....argh now I have.... bu**er it... I have tourets...honest!!;):D




I think it may benefit your curiosity if I say that most of my religious experience is not supernatural, but social, political, mental, emotional, intellectual and philosophical. I have very little experience, compared to you and PathOfOne, that I would regard as affiliated (real or not) or associated with the supernatural.
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But I would hazard a guess that much of your subjective justification for it could be put to objective testing and found to be based on flawed assumptions.



But hey look around you. Religious belief has survived. It can be romantic to be religious (or atheist) . . . sexual evolution . . . survival of the sexiest.:eek:
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If it was just about this sexy, romantic flirtation with belief I would have no quarrel. But its not. 10's of 1000s, maybe hundreds of 1000s or even millions of people will die horribly in the year to come because they allow alpha males belief systems to dominate. Billions will suffer a basic injustice justified by religious belief. What you and PoO have presented based on your experience is not representative of what belief is materially around the world today. And a cynic might claim it little more than a self granted slice of soma. I am not here trying to save the world nor deny you your thinking ;) I just like thinking about stuff and sharing my thoughts. Whatever science is or is not it is an amazing tool we have evolved for learning. And the objectively confirmed data it returns is often materially real. If I want to know why I exist I will look to this to provide the answers. Religious belief always claims to be super-rational where it is in actuality sub-rational. On an inter-personal level here I do have my own share of contradictions and hypocrisies and I am often more consciously aware of them than you may assume. In some sense I really have no belief, just a collection of information.
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inuk said:
I evidently, though not deliberately, seem to have a bit of a bible thumpers fervour in my writing style that seems to mask my true ambivalence. And if you look at some of my thoughts on cosmology and theoretical physics in the science sections I can be deemed as romantic as any spiritualist. Its about what floats your boat. What you see as important.
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I have to say, yes, I think I have been giving you less credit than you deserve in this regard. You've been honest in many of your views, especially your own religious experiences. It's nice to know that you do have a religious experience, and are not one of those who have no religious experience and talk about something they don't know and understand. The other thing I'd give you credit for is your concession that what you see as reality is not the same reality to everyone else, and that your perceptions and understandings are not superior, even to religious people. It is just your experience.

For that I have conceded that yes, what I believe is probably just my imagination and nothing more. My interest however, is in the honour, nobility of believing and the devotion to such beliefs, as well as how I might share that honour, nobility and devotion with others.

inuk said:
Though you correctly say some other ideology would take up the slack that would become the next challenge. We have to evolve, or die out. As I see it we are now a single massive tribe, we require a shared language of co-operation that meets the challenges ahead. Religions are too imature and too Alpha aggressive to create anything but a totalitarian hell.
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Religion has little power over government in my country, though that isn't true of a country like America which is dominated by religious fundamentalists. That isn't a positive sign for a superpower nation. It has detrimental effects on the education of such a country.

As for my own country, I am grateful and thankful that religion has little power over government because I don't believe the best out of most religions comes from state or governmental power anyway. The best out of a religion comes from private devotions, as that is what leads to one's own individualistic expression and experience of a religion. A religion loses its meaning in the exercise of state power.

As for Alpha male/female aggression, that is more of a phenomenon of religious fundamentalism than religion in general. Alpha male/female aggression isn't a property of religion. It's a property of fundamentalist sentiments in a religion, sentiments I deeply abhor.

If you were an insider of religion and had an insider's perspective you'd know the distinction between fundamentalism and religion based on reasonableness. I just think your opposition to religion, particularly the idea that it should just disappear, comes from your view as an outsider that what I consider fundamentalist sentiments represent the full picture of a religion.

As an insider who has looked at different ideologies in Christianity, I think what you abhor is only a part of the religion. What you abhor is what I consider to be fundamentalism. What you oppose is religion. What I oppose is fundamentalism in a religion.

inuk said:
With the full use of extant technology we could exploit resources to feed, clothe and house over twice the current global population with current developed world luxury. Our inibility to do so is a deliberate handicap imposed by the Alpha male groups of leaders, political and religious, that are only in it for themselves. I think people need to embrace technology and our global citizenship and stand up to these gangs of hoodlums we call our leaders. One of the reasons we do not is the psychological use of religion to accept the unacceptable. I know that for you, Salty and countless others religion has value but, to my thinking, it is religion that is preventing the kind of progress we need, want and deserve.
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I personally don't think religion is what is preventing that from happening. The people who are supposed to be involved in the distribution of large volumes of energy, goods and resources to benefit the world's people are the governments of all the world's countries.

These governments have the power to do what you are suggesting. The duties of these governments is to put money into keeping their economies going and the research, development and manufacture of weapons. The role that religious ideology plays in what governments do in carrying out these duties is insignificant. Religious ideology isn't stopping these governments from doing what you are suggesting. It is not stopping them from fulfilling their duties. More importantly, if you're going to talk about the distribution of energy, goods and resources, you have to consider the economic system that serves as the framework for deciding how this distribution of energy, goods and resources happens. The dominant model for the current global economy is market-driven capitalism and religion has little involvement in that.

The question of whether this distribution of energy, goods and resources is happening the way you want depends on how people run the global market-driven capitalist economy.

The last time I checked, the way people ran such an economy was to encourage people to buy and spend in large volumes. That's what keeps a capitalist economy going, but it's not the only important characteristic or feature of such an economy. Another aspect is that such an economy is driven by relentless competition against one's competitors to maximise one's profits.

To do that, you have to out-build, out-work and out-produce your competitors. That requires a lot of energy and resources. You are aiming for large volume sales of items, which you assume if huge numbers of people buy your products, are more appealing than your competitors. You buy heaps of stock in the hope that you are beating the competition. If you sell more, you get more profit, but to do that, it also means that you have to buy more stock.

If you're wrong, you have not only wasted money, but you've also wasted energy and resources. You did it all for the sake of maximising your profits. You are gambling energy and resources to make a profit.

But also consider what consumers do individually and then consider what that means on a large scale. Assume that everybody wants to own a house, a car, a computer, a television set, etc. Nobody wants to be left behind. If you see what someone else owns, you want to own one too. You don't want to miss out. You worry about what your friends will say, that somehow you're inadequate. You compare yourself to others.

This is what happens under market-driven capitalism, as opposed to socialism and communism. Market-driven capitalism is about giving people what they want, provided that they have the money to buy it.

Money is a validation tool. Money is power. What you have and what you own is validation of your personal achievements and your personal worth. It gives you a sense of power as well as a sense of security. You feel safer and more secure because of what you have and what you own. It makes you feel better off. What happens if you find that the rest of the people in your neighbourhood or in your circle of friends own something you don't have? You're going to want an upgrade. Your personal sense of worth is determined by what others have.

This is what caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis in America. It was greed, self-interest, jealousy and envy. It was people living beyond their means. People were comparing themselves to each other in terms of what they owned -- particularly how many houses they had.

It's the phenomenon of individual private ownership of property. The emphasis is on what you have, not what you can share with others. Market-driven capitalism isn't about sharing but private ownership of property. It's about owning, not sharing. This is in contrast with socialism, which is about a more equal distribution of property.

But it isn't just psychological. It's inherit in the economic system. Your own market value as an individual is dropping. The market value of the property you own determines your place in society. The market value of property, goods, energy and resources keeps changing. What was worth $100,000 is probably now worth only $1.

That leads to massive turnovers in goods, energy and resources. You shed your old stuff and buy new stuff so that you keep up with the rest of the world. That, in many ways is wasteful in terms of energy and resources. Stuff that was made and built 10 years ago that still has practical value is thrown away because its economic value has dropped.

If the global economy is run by market-driven capitalism and not socialism then it means that the global economy is run by an attitude to own, not an attitude to share. Therefore, if there's a reason why the world hasn't achieved a more equal distribution of energy, goods and resources, it's because the wealthier countries are hoarding their wealth. It's also run by the attitude of what's popular now, not what is useful. Thus, it is also because people are throwing things away because they're old or no longer popular, even though they're useful.

I mean, if you buy a set of clothes, why can't you wear it for the rest of your life? Why do people have to keep making clothes when they already have a wardrobe full of them? Why do handiwork on your house to make it look better if it's not going to fall apart? You already have a house. Be happy. Why get a new car? Your old car still works. Someone else who doesn't have a car can buy the one you want. Even better -- ship it to Africa! People in Western countries already have enough cars, buses and trains to get them where they want. Wastage! Duplication! Redundancy!

The cause is simple: market-driven capitalism.

If there's something I understand now about Karl Marx's disgust over private ownership of property, it is that capitalism is wasteful.

This is what their governments want, because it allows them to collect the funds needed for the research, development and manufacturer of weapons and the training or large standing armies. They want to preserve their own power in the world order. This isn't driven by religion. It's about the military industrial complex. It's about military power.

Capitalism was set up to give power first to the wealthier countries, the countries with the money, and second to the poorer, less developed countries. The wealthier countries sell their goods, get richer, stay in business and increase their market value at the expense of poor, less developed countries. The flow of money in their economies then allows them to either increase or maintain their military power, allowing them to project power across the globe.

I can understand it if you think the reason is because churches are hoarding wealth and funds to make bigger churches or to maintain whatever religious assets they have, but IMO a lot more money flows through a global, market-driven capitalist economy than through churches. Because money is exchanged for goods, services, energy and resources, more goods, services, energy and resources are being exchanged (and therefore wasted) through a market-driven capitalist economy than in churches.

Inuk, I think you've got the wrong people . . .

I for one put more money in the economy than through a church, and heck, I have a religion.
 
earl said:
Tao, (sorry, I like your first name better), your position seems to be that if atheists/areligious folks ran the world, we'd have an era of greater peace and tolerance. The record of the 20th century says that ain't so. Remember Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot of Cambodia- those mass Commie killers? WWI & II, which took countless lives weren't primarily about religious ideas. Sure, Hitler had some immense religious hatreds, but the man also did to homosexuals & gypsies what he did to Jews. Human hatred & intolerance on a grand scale in modern times has typically had little to do with religious ideas. earl
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To me you simply fail to see that religious paradigms were pivotal motivators in all your examples. You want to nail onto my thoughts something that only says at best "its no better than religion". But where do I propose any political ideology of that nature? Aside from the fact that each example is bestudded with religious metaphor and ritual, each having their own prophet(s), I never propose an alternative, never proseltyse anything but looking at all the available evidence. And I never will do. This linking atheism to 20th century political religions is a red herring. And always will be... no matter how many times it is employed.
 
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