Huckster79
Well-Known Member
Yes we actually agree in all practicality on much, i never felt disrepect for you at all, but thank you for making sure. . But im enjoying the banter over some nuanced semantics. In fact this post of yours i replied to i really dont disagee with much at all and concur with much. Well laid out and logical, i find banter such as ours good for the brain good for the person too, each of us arguing our points always should be checking ourselves, "do we really beleive what i am arguing...?"Religion is effective at organizing people's behavior. How else to unify a group of people across a large area who aren't closely related to each other? It's perfectly understandable that cultures succeeded and therefore passed on their ideas with religious values if they had them. Over time religions were honed by competition and survival. For example, I think it's perfectly reasonable that societies practicing human sacrifice would not be as robust as a society that did not have this practice.
Judeo-Christian values such as, "don't murder your neighbor" are ones I can live by. However, I don't need a god to explain why we couldn't live in large groups if murder were common. On the other hand, there are so-called Christians who claim that God decrees women must carry children to term. This is something that makes no sense to me and therefore discard that idea.
I'm not disrespecting you either, I'm just answering your post in the interest of doing more than laughing at Trump supporters. I suggest, that just like me, you are rationally choosing which religious values make sense to you. I'm no different in that I too am picking and choosing among society's values and rules and not necessarily adopting all of them. The difference is I don't hold the beliefs of a religion when I evaluate the values of the society around me.
That said, religion has a strong hold on people and society. In my opinion this is because the rules set by, for example, Judeo-Christian values are how people can feel safe. Following them is how people succeed. Denying the justification for all those rules and values by denying there is a supernatural being draws fire because it jeopardizes people's status in society.
Religion really helps people deal with the circumstances of their lives. And so, I won't disrespect somebody's religious beliefs. I might disrespect the religious persons statements or demands that I do as they would because of a supernatural force.
I mean no sarcasm in least, but should we start a thread for this specific disssion?