Should religion exist?

Should you exist?

Have you even read the fucking Bible?

Yes, of course.

Yes, I've read it backwards and forwards. If you think it extols the virtues of men then you let the high-sounding language get to you.

"But man seeks to bow before that only which is
recognized by the greater majority, if not by all his fellow-men, as having a right to be worshipped; whose
rights are so unquestionable that men agree unanimously to bow down to it. For the chief concern of these
miserable creatures is not to find and worship the idol of their own choice, but to discover that which all
others will believe in, and consent to bow down to in a mass. It is that instinctive need of having a worship
in common that is the chief suffering of every man, the chief concern of mankind from the beginning of
times. It is for that universality of religious worship that people destroyed each other by sword. Creating
gods unto themselves, they forwith began appealing to each other: "Abandon your deities, come and bow
down to ours, or death to ye and your idols!" And so will they do till the end of this world; they will do so
even then, when all the gods themselves have disappeared, for then men will prostrate themselves before
and worship some idea."

-Bro K

What a bad thread, everything gets misinterpreted.

Should we outlaw cults? Charles manson showed us one man with too much influence on a group of people can lead them all to do very mean things!

Op is another one of those "we'd be better off without religion in society" posters when in reality religion is what kept societies so stable in the middle ages.

Religion is why the middle ages were the dark ages.

...

But that's hardly true at all, religion was one of the last bastions of learning in the middle ages.

Get your facts straight, no one reads gibbons anymore either.

>Religion is why the middle ages were the dark ages.

There were approximately 1800 years of darkness between Archimedes and Descartes. That was the result of anti-intellectual Judaeo-Christian forces.

>Should religion exist?
It does exist so yes.

>Is religion outdated?
Religion is a dated word. Our modern ideology extremely pluralistic and far less advanced than religion. What we have today is more like early paganism.

>Most religious texts have violent aspects and are widely misinterpreted e.g. Westboro' Baptist Church, ISIS, Wirathu.

Idiot. Every one of those is an example of socio-political rebellion. They arent interpreting anything, religion for them is a sublime justification for their own ideology. Factually it is totally insubstantial to them.

*tips fedora* my my, a fellow scholar i see, hmpf, these lowlife here do not fathom our superior intellect and vast knowledge and understanding of human history and the petty illusion known as "religion". good to have you on our side, fellow genius

^ This whole post is garbage.

Should religion exist?
at one point yes but not anymore

Is religion outdated?
yeah, we must pursue a more pure reality by moving forward past such ideas

^ This whole post is garbage.

Checkmate faggot.

wrong.

We are having some world class discourse in this thread. Good to see Veeky Forums still hasn't lost its edge.

Fuck you, I bet you wear an unfashionable hat!

>tips bonnet

>didnt say check em faggot

mistakes were made

kysmm

Religion is the inevitable consequence when naturally self important creatures try to convince themselves that they're fighting for a higher cause. Until people recognize their self importance, things like religion won't go away. Indeed, it's not important whether or not they goes away. Things will happen, wars will be fought, ideas will be challenged, and the world will go whatever direction the world wants to go. Upon divorcing yourself from it all, you become an observer.

So do that.

Nothing wrong with just violence.

And the WBC are some of the best christians in the US, just as ISIS are the best muslims since Mohammad himself.

Religion exists to explain and analyze the supernatural. Since the supernatural exists, religion is necessary.

Don't you dare fucking send me to /x/. I'm right, you're not.

Nationalism has done great evils as well. Should we abandon the idea of nations? Will that make the world better?

le don't tell me what to do

>violence is bad because my fedora or whatever the fuck atheists look to for objective guidance said so
inb4 'im le master of logic and reason so that means whatever i pull out of my ass as a moral judgement is correct'
There were no Dark Ages you adorable little historical revisionist.

There's more rigour in 'pseudoscience' like astrology and alchemy than any science.
>it's 2016

Have you read Becker?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denial_of_Death

Yes, isn't that obvious?
Oy gevalt!

Go see a doctor and get yourself checked for schizophrenia! My cousin is an excellent psychiatrist!

Strife is the natural state of things and any religion that stands to last the test of time recognizes this and talks about it extensively.

This picture makes me think that when she turned into a pillar of salt she was just 100% OK, only made of salt suddenly.

No, I haven't. Seems interesting, though; might take a look.

...

Don't bother, it's not. Sophomoric reading of religion and projection of the highest order. None worship youth and deny death moreso than atheists.
All deviation from form is the ultimate in divine punishment, interesting that you thought so.

Rome fell because of lack of roman born and roman trained citizens for their army, instead as greece did before them they began to rely on mercenaries and barbarian forces to defend their already overextended front.

Even then thought still prospered in byzantium, middle east, and china, also funny you mention descartes as the "beginning of enlightenment" and seem to ignore that the only ones keeping any old information alive during the hundreds of years before the humanists restarted the renaissance in the 1300s were the monks.

Yes those filthy monks of religious background who sat around all day preserving most of the western canon.

>i disagree with you so you must be wearing a funny looking hat lol!
try drinking lots of chloride, k?

Any monkey can "preserve" the work of past geniuses.

The point is, nobody was really moving the ball forward with respect to philosophy and mathematics in the 1800 years between Archimedes and Descartes. You had a few minor figures, and various "preservationists" that rediscovered Greek insights here and there. But no major advancements.

Go back to /b/, moron.

you will (hopefully) one day cringe that you posted this

This is how atheists argue

It's good stuff. It's not about religion in particular. It's about 'heroism', and indeed any belief-system that entails a transcendence of mortality through symbolic means. Helps to make sense of a lot of senseless human behavior like war, etc.

You're the one who mentioned atheism, you mewling soft-headed faggot.

the person I was responding to wasn't really much better

>minor figures

Aquinas was smarter than men five hundred years before him and five hundred years after him.

>im not an atheist i just think religion is for evil white rapist men!!! im ~~~~~spiritual~~~~~~~

Please.

Christfags are the most articulate and loving people on Veeky Forums.

Wow, Veeky Forums's resident christcuck really got triggered by this thread.

>hey guys, I proved God's real!
Yeah, so there has to be a prime mover, there has to be a prime mover, there has to be a prime mover, there have to be forms because I said so and teleology applies to everything for reasons
GENIUS
E
N
I
U
S

Your whole premise is shit. Religion wasn't the cause of some intellectual vacuum, it was literally the way the vacuum expressed itself. Rome had only recently lifted a vast portion of Europe from tribal iron-age arrangements into trans-continental "classical" civilization. When Roman primacy failed and these regions were again cut off from global trade/transport and the liberty granted by pax romanus there had to be a massive upheaval of tradition and identity. The classical tradition was forsaken and they couldn't hardly look to the forgotten barbarian past to make sense of their world as the paganism tried to do before. Christianity was the only thing to fill the void. Maybe some new pagan or shamanic religion could have sprung up but Christianity was took over because it is extraordinarily simple and most importantly it encourages order, passivity, and authoritarian world view. It gave the emerging warlord class a tool to passively subjugation peasants, and it gave the peasants an easy peace of mind. Christianity being there at the right time was a complete chance occurrence and I believe if it hadnt Europe would have a much more democratic legacy than the shit we have and still do tolerate.

>Christianity was took over because it is extraordinarily simple
I hate this argument, it is almost the exact opposite of simple.

99.98% of the believing population believes in a simple Christianity, and that's what counts here.

it took over because it was international and unified

It still places exceptional demands on the individual, or at least it used to up until the various reformations.

'Sup brotendo. I was thinkin about gettin my foreskin sown back on, cause I haven't candy flipped this hard until I got adult circumcised bro. Fresh, you got a pretty sick style, you wanna butt-chunk some jankem?

>behavior of churchgoers follows the church's teachings
I have some news.

The narrative of Christianity is simple and concrete, and becoming a member is a simple process.

Troll somewhere else.
>anecdotes
yeah /b/ro a religion is the result of its members thats how it works *shitposts intensely because im a fucking idiot*

With indulgences and later sola fide, leading us to the enlightenment and cultural/lifestyle christianity of course, but for a true believer, in works, to be a christian is not easy. Rather then choose something material and simple like Islam.
But it is not a simple and concrete narrative, it is a religion filled with mysteries and really the only to deny the world.

The question isn't whether they should exist, the question is whether the propositions they hold are true or not.

>for a true believer
True believers are very rare and are not the only or arguably even the primary force that shaped the Christian west and "Christian culture"

We weren't discussing whether Christianity is true or not in that post. No need to be so triggered.

>But it is not a simple and concrete narrative, it is a religion filled with mysteries and really the only to deny the world.

Maybe it is for 0.0001% of Christians. But not for the vast majority of "Christians" throughout history. The reason it spread through the vacuum of the former Roman Empire in Western Europe is that the core narrative is simple enough to grasp (good guy son of god gets executed), and the signup process is easy.

What is the book of proverbs
What is exodus.
West-boro baptist church is nothing like Isis, Islamic religion is a beginners guide for fascism, hate, and totalitarian theocracy.
>Westboro baptist hasn't done anything yet.
>The shooters in the Columbine high school shootings
Were admitted atheist and eugenics
>Saddam Hussein was found to be a fascist atheist
>Hitler was an atheist personally publicly he was an agnostic; wanted to round up the Christians with the Jews, but most of the Ayrian race were Christian

Anyone here read/watched Wise Blood

It promised you eternal paradise and retribution for all sin and suffering if you simply obeyed God's word. Consider that until this point you had to sacrafice the thighs of an ox to get even a single (of many) god's dubious attention. Christianity was a breath of freedom for most people.

>true believer
Not really. The meaning of Christ's death and "Eli Eli Lama Sabachthani" is that God has forsaken us and no longer intervenes on earth. This is why father then son then holy spirit. The Spirit is Jesus' legacy that we're left with which is pretty much a secular humanitarian message of equality, peace and goodness. It doesnt demand much at all.

No, that's just what your rotten liberal mind projects onto it.