Why does the word "Religion" have such a negative connotation to it?

Why does the word "Religion" have such a negative connotation to it?

>Religion is just used to control people!
>I'm not religious bro, I'm spiritual.
>Jesus is the light, He is above religion!
It seems like everyone is trying to disassociate themselves from being labeled religious, as if it's an inherently bad term.

Have atheists ruined the word with their autistic fits of rage?

Religion simply means: "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe" which often includes a supernatural element.

That's it, a very simple definition. It doesn't mean anything bad yet people put such a bad vibe on the word "religion", it's almost always used in a negative way and I see it constantly even on Veeky Forums.

>Religion
>Worldview
>Meta-narrative
All mean the same thing, it's the foundation on which you base your political and philosophical ideology on.

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Because we live in a culture dominated by Naturalism, Materialism and Darwinian Atheism. These people have spent decades attacking religion, not realizing that their philosophy of naturalism (what we see is all there is) and evolutionism (monkey-to-man) is a religion as well.

I've done some Creation VS Evolutionism debates and it's hilarious to see the atheists get pissed at the debate title. They like to put an "-ism" after Creation in order to smear it, but never put it on their own worldview so I like to switch it around.

There you go OP.

>>I'm not religious bro, I'm spiritual.
there is nothing wrong with this one. I respect religion and Christianity despite not being religious myself in the sense that I subscribe to its tenets.

It doesn't. Maybe among atheist circle jerks.

The problem with this graph is that it implies that they were good scientists because they were religious, when religion more often than not interferes with scientific progress.

When you are able to separate your religious beliefs from your scientific ones, you can make scientific discoveries just fine.

>Catholic scientists, both religious and lay, have led scientific discovery in many fields.[4] From ancient times, Christian emphasis on practical charity gave rise to the development of systematic nursing and hospitals and the Church remains the single greatest private provider of medical care and research facilities in the world.[5] Following the Fall of Rome, monasteries and convents remained bastions of scholarship in Western Europe and clergymen were the leading scholars of the age - studying nature, mathematics and the motion of the stars (largely for religious purposes).[6] During the Middle Ages, the Church founded Europe's first universities, producing scholars like Robert Grosseteste, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon and Thomas Aquinas, who helped establish scientific method.[7] During this period, the Church was also a great patron of engineering for the construction of elaborate cathedrals. Since the Renaissance, Catholic scientists have been credited as fathers of a diverse range of scientific fields: Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829) prefigured the theory of evolution with Lamarckism; Friar Gregor Mendel (1822–84) pioneered genetics and Fr Georges Lemaitre (1894-1966) proposed the Big Bang cosmological model.[8] The Jesuits have been particularly active, notably in astronomy. Church patronage of sciences continues through elite institutions like the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and Vatican Observatory.[9]

The "Conflict Thesis" which is essentially your point here:

> religion more often than not interferes with scientific progress

has been debunked by most historians. In addition, no historian takes the idea of "The Dark Ages" seriously anymore. these are all protestant memes that fedoras and society at large have latched on to as well.

>Historians of science today have moved away from a conflict model, which is based mainly on two historical episodes (those involving Galileo and Darwin) in favor of a "complexity" model, because religious figures took positions on both sides of each dispute and there was no overall aim by any party involved in discrediting religion.[17] Biologist Stephen Jay Gould said: "White's and Draper's accounts of the actual interaction between science and religion in Western history do not differ greatly. Both tell a tale of bright progress continually sparked by science. And both develop and use the same myths to support their narrative, the flat-earth legend prominently among them".[18] In a summary of the historiography of the conflict thesis, Colin A. Russell, the former President of Christians in Science, said that "Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study. The same is nearly as true of White, though his prominent apparatus of prolific footnotes may create a misleading impression of meticulous scholarship".[19]

>While some historians had always regarded the Draper-White thesis as oversimplifying and distorting a complex relationship, in the late twentieth century it underwent a more systematic reevaluation. The result is the growing recognition among historians of science that the relationship of religion and science has been much more positive than is sometimes thought. Although popular images of controversy continue to exemplify the supposed hostility of Christianity to new scientific theories, studies have shown that Christianity has often nurtured and encouraged scientific endeavour, while at other times the two have co-existed without either tension or attempts at harmonization. If Galileo and the Scopes trial come to mind as examples of conflict, they were the exceptions rather than the rule.[20]

Because most religions nowadays are mutually exclusive, largely due to the Abrahamic influence.

In ancient times you could belong to any number of cults and worship any number of gods of your choosing because there was no one true god.

What this leads to is people describing themselves as Christian for example, as a positive. They don't say I'm religious. They say I'm Christian. They're not just religious. They're also not a Muslim.

It's secular people that use the term religious as a blanket term for all of these other religions, including Christianity and Islam. If they said they were not Christian, that could mean they're Muslim.

So religious is a term used by secular people, not by religious people.

The European Dark Ages, which happened because of Christianity.

>evolutionism is a religion
A creation mythos doesn't mean it's a religion, even if there wasn't overwhelming evidence to support the theory

You're trolling or stupid. The Dark ages happened for the same reason they happened in Greece or China. Societal collapse. Had nothing to do with RCC which saved what they could, the good scholars they were.

Also Dark ages aren't synonymous with Middle Ages fyi.

>Why does the word "Religion" have such a negative connotation to it?

There is only one part of the world that takes their religion seriously and it quite sucks thanks to it.

>There is only one part of the world that takes their religion seriously and it quite sucks thanks to it.
You mean there's only one part that doesn't. Also even in the West it's a contentous subject. More or less atheism IS the religion as opposed to people being non-religious,

Yes more and more historians don't even use the term anymore because they simply were that "dark" in that sense. Yes, the Early Middle Ages were a tumultuous period of rebuilding because the Western Roman Empire has just collapsed. But that was not because of Christianity. If anything, the Catholic Church was the only entity filling that vacuum; acting as a kind of welfare state opening orphanages, monasteries which would evolve to become the first universities in Europe, and so on. For all its corruption, the Catholic Church's various functions with respect to state formation was vital during the Middle Ages. So yeah, the idea of the "Christian Dark Ages" is a myth. It will take a while for the rest of society and media to catch up to this consensus that historians have been having for a while .

>were that
*were not that

>atheism IS the religion
This meme needs to stop, a lack of belief isn't a belief, it's like calling darkness a form of light when darkness is a lack of light

hiding behind the dictionary definition. when people say "atheism" is a religion, they are referring to this new atheist movement. id say its definitely an ideology. anti-theism + materialism /physicalism. something like that, idk

Atheism is based on philosophical naturalism and the theory of evolution.

So yeah, atheists *do* have a religion, it's just one that replaces God with random chance.

Darwin made it intellectually fulfilling to be an atheist. Before that, it was hard being an atheist because they had no coherent worldview.

Fun fact, those atheists believed the universe was eternal (no beginning).

a worldview isn't a religion, has it right

That's just "no u" fallacy user. Even if we assume that the 1-2% of anti-clerical atheist represent the whole it would still be a social movement or an ideology not a religion.

Stop it before you embarass yourself even more

>All mean the same thing, it's the foundation on which you base your political and philosophical ideology on.

I have to agree with Schopie when he says religion is just Metaphysics for the masses.

Anyways, religion now tends to get a bad name due to recent abuses, which then spark interest into examining past abuses and lumping them together.

It is certainly foolish to assume that religion is inherently bad, but you can't blame those who lost faith in the face of child abuse scandals, radical religious groups, etc.

While you can make all the points you want on the benefits that religion brings about, the representation and movement of a religion in the world is also quite important in our evaluation, especially when authorities of a respective group move contrary to doctrine.

Lastly, for a really makes me think, religion is generally thought to of etymologically evolved from 'religare', or 'to bind'.
Take whatever hermeneutics meaning you want from that.

I disagree. Religion is something which is your perception of reality.

ugh now we have two extremists. dude, I study population genetics at grad school and I can tell you that evolution and ooa are beyond 100% proven. about as much as germ theory is. That doesn't mean have you be an atheist if you accept that, I certainly am not.

>Darwin
I dont know why these types keep bringing up darwin. Hes the one that got the ball rolling in the modern era but thats it.

its a social movement, ideology, worldview, religion. we're splitting hairs here, you can adopt whatever word you like. but certainly its more than just "lack of belief in a god"

>I have to agree with Schopie when he says religion is just Metaphysics for the masses.

It's more complicated than that. Most people reach metaphysical attainment through devotion. Just like your average normie might know basic algebra but not know it at a phd level, religion is something who's more complicated nuances (and metaphysics) is only going to understood by a relatively select few people.

Semantics.

1. Who am I?
2. Where do I come from?
3. What is my purpose?
4. What happens when I die?

Both theists and atheists claim to have the answers, and both have put faith in those answers.

Now what you CAN do is solidify your belief by scientific, archeological and historical discoveries. This is why the whole creation vs evolution debate is so important.

nice way to sum it up
>reach metaphysical attainment through devotion
care to elaborate on that a bit more? this pretty much nails what I see it as. In all religions, you see different levels that correspond to differing levels of awareness. In India for instance, you see the average folk who subscribe to the various dogmas, then you see the deeper vedantic philosophical schools. mysticism is the core truth but dogma is the societal structure.

newgeology.us/presentation32.html
www.trueorigin.org

evolution is a myth. it has been proven wrong countless times. it is mathematically impossible

That's wrong though. Our definition of religion is an way how one worships the supernatural.
What is your mother tongue? I am interested how you came to this mistake.

>but certainly its more than just "lack of belief in a god"
No, it's precisely that.

>we're splitting hairs here
No, you've made an error and now you just try to smear shit over it so it won't appear so.

>sending me wall of texts he likely hasn't read.
I dont want to devolve this thread, but I will ask you one question. Where do you think dogs came from?

You seem to understand it pretty good. If you do devotions the way Jesus says "with your door shut" after a while you'll start to gain more knowledge and wisdom pertaining to metaphysics. The time tested but true prayers, meditations and fastings work.

>Where do you think dogs came from?
Dogs.

Have you ever seen a dog produce anything other than its own kind?

Let's get real

Religion means "bullshit stupid people use to feel better about dying"

0/10
here is your reply

Jews don't believe in an afterlife though

>He ACTUALLY believes in magic and gods

Yes they do

It's a gloomy dark world, just like the other after lives of the ancient middle east

Do you believe that dogs like chiwawas and poodles were in the wild in their present form?

He ACTUALLY believes nothing exploded and soup became alive

Not exactly

No, they were bred for selective traits.

They are still dogs. They will never turn into a spider, or a whale, or a cow.

You can mix the gene pool by selective breeding but there is a limit. A dog does not have the genetic code to grow wings.

Proof?

no tons of jews believe in reincarnation and the like. you're probably thinking old testament era jews

Spectrum of cosmic radiation

The universe has a beginning, something Christians have been saying for centuries when the atheists thought the universe was eternal.

lmao

Kabbalist might. Jews had concept of Sheol which was a colorless, gray existence similar to what's found in Greco-Roman paganism for the average normie.

Now Jews probably have a somewhat Christian concept of heaven via theological osmosis.

Did you know that the original dog ancestor was a wolf species? So you accept wolves can evolve into poodles?

>The universe has a beginning
> when the atheists thought the universe was eternal
proofs?

Canines. You are proving my point here.
And it is not evolution, it is variation within a kind.

Evolution has like 6 meanings:

1. Cosmic evolution: the origin of time, space, and matter from nothing in the “big bang”
2. Chemical evolution: all elements “evolved” from hydrogen
3. Stellar evolution: stars and planets formed from gas clouds
4. Organic evolution: life begins from inanimate matter
5. Macro-evolution: animals and plants change from one type into another
6. Micro-evolution: variations form within the “kind”

Only the last one is a scientific observable fact. The first 5 are complete speculation and wild assumptions, they are in the realm of faith.

Animals do not produce anything other than its own kind.

>Our definition of religion is an way how one worships the supernatural.
Supernatural is an awful and archaic word that only continues to exist because of it's usefulness as an intellectual club. It projects materialist preconceptions upon cultures that lack them causing the user to miss the forest for the trees.

What is "supernatural"?
Literally beyond nature, so with that in mind then can we claim animist religions worship the "supernatural" when they worship nature spirits?

Claiming that religion is worship of the supernatural is an intellectually biased statement that presupposes a materialist worldview and essentially marginalises all other concepts right off the bat as superstition heathen ritual.

>Claiming that religion is worship of the supernatural is an intellectually biased statement that presupposes a materialist worldview and essentially marginalises all other concepts right off the bat as superstition heathen ritual.
Why the hell marginalizes? If you feel threatened by the correct name for your beliefs, perhaps you should not visit such harmful sites.

I don't mean marginalised in a SJW sense and I don't feel threatened by it. I'm saying that dividing the world into "natural" and "supernatural" is stupid and produces ideological blinders.

Two points: one religion has a nasty history for being used as justification for a bunch of nasty shit. Two, organized religion is by its nature inherently an exercise in groupthink.

...

>I don't mean marginalised in a SJW sense and I don't feel threatened by it.
Well, it certainly sounds so.

>I'm saying that dividing the world into "natural" and "supernatural" is stupid and produces ideological blinders.
It's not stupid you silly, it just threatens you.

>it's not stupid
It's fucking retarded, because it a priori assumes that whatever concept it is attached to does not exist. That's it's sole purpose in modern times, to serve as a subtle pejorative used by materialists to refer to concepts they don't like, beyond that it's an utterly meaningless word.

>Atheism is based on philosophical naturalism and the theory of evolution.

No it isn't it just means I reject your belief because you have not shown evidence to suppprt your irrational belief system.

Evolution is just another nail in the coffin for religion.

Would you point where I claimed it would have been any better without religion?

Also organized religion is indeed inherently an exercise in groupthink. It wouldn't need a special word for disagreement if it weren't.

>So yeah, atheists *do* have a religion, it's just one that replaces God with random chance.

Evolutio is not based on random chance it's funny how most atheists know the bible but there is not a single religious person looking at the evidence for evolution.

I wonder why

Oh yes it would debunk all the lies that are necessary to believe your bullshit.

Religion does not, in all contexts, denote (simply) a set of beliefs, though. That's the inherent problem is that in academic contexts, there's an implication of labeling religion as a set of ideas. Even the most sympathetic analysts of world religions tend to academicize religion as concealing material truths. If we always reduce religion to being at odds with materialism, then we're really labeling all forms of religion as superstition and irrationality, things that you can argue are good or bad, relevant or irrelevant, but that also will leave you at an impasse. It might be better for us to go back to the drawing board as students of history and understand that religion in history hasn't masked "the truth" but rather been shaped by cultural conceptions thereof. No one perceives irrationality. They might perceive alternative rationalities, however (not to sound too much like Sean Spicer, Master Postmodernist, when I say that).

>that whatever concept it is attached to does not exist
It does not, it just means the concepts is beyond material world. Sorry that it threatens you but that's just the way it is.

No atheists don't claim to have answers to these stupid questions.

Who am I: A human being a retarded being but still human.

Where do I come from: Your dad fucked your mom idiot

Purpose: Why do you think there is a purpose ? Anser this question before you ask something that retarded.

What happens after I die: Your brain stops working and the lights go out no soul no heaven.

Fuck we have one life to live on this great place but that is not enough for you insecure fag right?

You want another place where everything you can imagine is shoved up your ass.

Pathetic insecure loser, people like you are the reason why people lough at religious people.

He is right.

>beyond the material world
I see, so you classify the idea of an emergent property of consciousness a supernatural phenomenon? Is the study of pure mathematics a field of research dedicated to supernatural phenomenon? Is a legal code a supernatural concept?
How about the plot arch of a work of fiction is that supernatural as well?
Are languages supernatural?

All of those are things that exist and deal with concepts that are as far we know beyond the material world (unless you think the number two, mens rea, and Romeo and Juliette exist as discrete material entities floating around in the universe somewhere), so clearly they must be supernatural right?

It's a useless, meaningless word that has long outlived it's usefulness.

Gee...Don't be silly. Stop equating your ghosts with math. Idealism is one thing, projecting antropomorphic concepts onto universe is another.

Definition of supernatural
>of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially: of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
>a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature
>b : attributed to an invisible agent (as a ghost or spirit)

...

>n-no the nonmaterial concepts that are useful to my worldview don't c-count!
In other words what ever concepts offend the sensibilities of the puritan materialist are "supernatural" but everything else gets a pass.

>n-no the nonmaterial concepts that are useful to my worldview don't c-count!
Funny thing is that if you removed "to my worldview", you'll be quite close to being correct.

Also that's the exact definition of the world. Trying to cast fog by blanda-uping together ideas and ghosts won't help you.

>Religions are good, stop saying "Religion" like it's a bad thing!
>"Evolutionism" is bad because it's a religion

thanks andhumanities

>blanda upp
How old are you?
Twelve?
Grow up kid.

>"Evolutionism" is bad because it's a religion
Who said that?

The first reply.

Reasonably...

Be.lie.f. Be-lie-vers, as in not thinkers but rather mere [mindless] followers, who have nothing of consequence on their own merit. So far, millions of people--maybe billions of people--have followed pedophile-preachers and many of them do not care.
Re.lie.gion. Because followers don't think, religions can re-peat the same lies and always there are people who will repeatedly fall for it or fall for it because their parents terrified them with threats of their God's wrath. Their god is imperfect and hate-filled: many of their bibles even write "These are the things GOD HATES," admitting they and their god have hate towards others.

Studying and analyzing language--identifying the roots of words--can reveal lies (to intelligent people who are capable of learning).

This is pseudoshit. Science never explained that all mystical phenomena is "projections of the consciousness." Just wishful thinking by desperate atheist spergs.

>Losing an argument to a child

shame on you

That's what I'm getting at. An honest scientist has no business using a word like supernatural, as the scientific conception of nature is all encompassing, once a "supernatural" phenomenon is catalogued it ceases to be supernatural.

So what dishonest people really mean when they say that religion is worship of the supernatural, is religion is the worship of falsehood. Which quite rightfully sounds like dogmatic nonsense, especially when it hypocritically excludes things like Marxism, Anarchism, and all those other secular isms from it's classification.

He'd have to present an argument first for me to lose it.

>Why does the word "Religion" have such a negative connotation to it?

Denotative too. Means "system of bondage".

Actually it means to "go over carefully".

Because it is rightfully equated with dogmatism, and if you can't see why dogma is bad there is no way to reason with you and you're just annoying.

>having firm, unshakable convictions is wrong
>i refuse to talk to anyone who doesn't share my view
progressive detected

>having firm, unshakable convictions about impossible myths that cause you to make unprovable claims and deny reality is wrong

fixed

>>I'm not religious bro, I'm spiritual.
As someone who is deeply religious (Eastern Orthodox Daoist), I cringe a little bit when people say this. Everyone is religious whether they realize it or not. It is in the foundations of our minds to be religious, as much as it is in the foundations of our minds to reason, have social hierarchies, feel love, be violent, etc.

>Religion simply means: "a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe" which often includes a supernatural element.
I would use divine/sacred in place of "supernatural". As we're talking about negative connotations, you get a lot of them with "supernatural" as well, especially from people who get all "B-b-b-but that's not scientific".
Religion is the aspect of culture, thought, society, etc. that intersects with the sacred.

>Be-lie-vers
So edgy bro. If you talk to anyone who is actually religious, like, really deeply religious, it is almost always either because they had a direct divine experience, or because they were arrived at their beliefs through reason, or (usually) both. I'm not talking about the people who go to church every week for the bake sales and the pot lucks and the singing, but even they usually have experienced at least some connection to the divine. We all have.
People who accept this are no more irrational than people who refuse to.

strawman much? maybe you should actually study and immerse yourself something before you form an opinion of it.

>he thinks he is his body
you poor, poor man.

...

Religion is always based on faith.
Faith is a pretty negative ideal.

Do you have faith that 1 + 1 = 2?
What about that 1 = 1?
What about that the sun will rise tomorrow?
What about that, if you let go of something, it will fall?

You can't build a system of truths and falsehoods without a set of fundamental assertions you accept "blindly".

>eastern Orthodox Daoist
How does that work?

I have evidence that those things will happen so it isn't faith by definition.

I have evidence that I encountered a divine being, and that I have perceived existence beyond the limits of my physical body, and, moreover, I can reasonably and logically fit these experiences and perceptions such that they are consistent with "science" and what not. And on top of that I'm quite the skeptic. But I can't deny the existence of something I have personally witnessed, because the whole idea behind science is that it is observation-based.

Also, you never have evidence of something that /will/ happen, you can only have evidence of something that /did/ happen.
c.f. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Problem_of_induction

Technically, I'm only Eastern Orthdox Daoist part (most) of the time, on certain occasions, I'm more of a Latter Day Daoist: the nights before, during, and immediately after full moons; equinoxes and solstices of years that not divisible by 2, 3, or 5, except summer solstices usually every year unless I'm particularly close to the equator; a spontaneous 10-15 day period that occurs semi-regularly every year or two; and other circumstances as they arise on an ad hoc basis. I used to be hardcore LDD 24/7/52, but over the years I've mellowed out and drifted back towards the roots.
>How does that work?
The short answer is that I'm an a Daoist of Eastern Orthodoxy. The long answer would involve a lot of explaining.

Brains are so fickle, it's too strange to just assume deistic intervention within natural occurrences. It comes to a point where religious beliefs in the conventional sense are baseless and probably gonna die out in a few centuries

> it's too strange
stranger than fiction, ne? :^)
>religious beliefs in the conventional sense
define please. whose conventions?

pass user

You tried to argument "supernatural" is hateful and bigoted word, yet you failed to prove so.

If I was you, I´ll crawl away in shame.

Being labeled Religious was also ruined by fundamentalists too, since it came identify that particular demographic. No one wants to be labeled religious if they're gonna be lumped together with with some inbred, backwoods snake handlers. Such a shame too. Even though I'm moderately liberal politically, I always identified myself as being religious.