what makes man religious

[Ludicus]

we didn't castrate the slaves

You know the reason (above all for economic reasons). Anyway, read the Encyclopedia of American Race Riots.

fkizz

Also see all the terrorist strikes...

Religious fanaticism + political manipulation+western destruction of the Middle East.

-------
Back to the topic, "what makes a man religious", a delicious article,
Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that's not a joke

....Of course these findings do not prove that it is impossible to stop believing in God.
What they do indicate, quite powerfully, is that we may be fooling ourselves if we think that we are making the key decisions about what we believe, and if we think we know how deeply our views pervade our consciousnesses.

It further suggests that the difference between the atheist and the non-atheist viewpoint is much smaller than probably either side perceives. Both groups have consciousnesses which create for themselves realities which include very similar tangible and intangible elements. It may simply be that their awareness levels and interpretations of certain surface details differ.

It’s clearly the case that the future will involve an increase in religious populations and a decrease in scepticism,” says Steve Jones, a professor in genetics at University College London, speaking at the Hay Festival in the UK recently.

This may appear as bad news for pro-atheism campaigners. But for the evolutionary life-force which may actually make the decisions, this may augur well for the continued existence of humanity. (An image of Richard Dawkins and his selfish gene having a testy argument over dinner springs to mind.)

In the meantime, it might be wise for religious folks to refrain from teasing atheist friends who accidentally say something about their souls. And it might be equally smart for the more militant of today’s atheists to stop teasing religious people at all.

We might all be a little more spiritual than we think.

[Diocle]

.. it might be equally smart for the more militant of today’s atheists to stop teasing religious people at all.

What a ing idiotic exhortation! I never teased people with faith, never!
I respect too much the pain of living and dying on this world, for disrespecting people searching for a word of hope about the darkness beyond the end.

Sadly this hope is not for me, because, as he said in Italy a great jouranlist about his Atehism, "I've not received the gift of faith."
For me there is no hope about anything beyond my last breath, I won't see any light awaiting for me, I won't meet my father and my mom and my beloved ones, they are ash, they live just as dear memories in my neuronal synapses, I won't survive my death, I won't see the future generations struggling on this valley of sorrow for the centuries to come, I'll end when my heart stops his run, if I will be conscious, then fear will be pretty great, but all in all, more than death I fear dying, so, if the fate will be so merciful with me to give me a quick death, or at least to let me choose the right way to leave, then the jump into the nothing will be less cruel, I suppose.

That said, I just hope to have the strenght to stay loyal, till the last instant, to what I know being the truth: God does not exist.

[fkizz]

You know the reason (above all for economic reasons).

There's economical pressure for almost anything of that sort. Several books even claim Lincoln abolished slavery because North faction had enough machinery to afford giving up slave labour, while the South didn't.
Regardless, due to materialistic aspects of the world, there will be economic pressure for almost every decision.

Religious fanaticism + political manipulation+western destruction of the Middle East.

Well, I don't remember our country signing up to get a slice of middle east in the last 300+ years.
As far as our country identity goes, fighting goes mostly on a Reconquista finished many centuries ago, still during Feudalism.

[Ludicus]

I just hope to have the strenght to stay loyal, till the last instant, to what I know being the truth: God does not exist.

Well, why would the fear of the death change an absolute and irrefutable truth? a cube has 6 faces, and God does not exist.

Diocle

Sadly this hope is not for me, because, as he said in Italy a great jouranlist about his Atehism, "I've not received the gift of faith."

Don't worry, you are still blessed with the atheist faith.I'm between the margins of the river, and I go where the river goes,without thinking too much about it.

And yet, thinking about it, I'm a rationalist,more than an agnostic; in fact, there is a subtle difference, rationalism cannot say of the unknown that it is so far known as to be unknowable;agnosticism directly implies the affirmation that the unknown is unknowable.I don't know if the unknown is unknowable.

As Pessoa put it, in Philosophical Essays,

All faiths, however absurd they may seem, or contradictory, are therefore possible; they cannot be denounced as false; they must simply be let live as probabilities that never can be verified. This leads to tolerance without an effort.

The attitude of higher rationalism receives its symbol in that celebrated anecdote,which is related of Baudelaire.
A naval officer, a friend of his, who had just returned from a long colonial voyage, was showing him a fetish he had brought back; he showed him with disgust that wooden object, the astonishing idol of a human race. And, as he, after having shown it, was going to throw it in disgust into a corner, Baudelaire laid sudden hands upon his arm. “Stop!” he said, “What if it were the true God?” – Et si c’était le vrai Dieu? – This is the higher rationalism, both in essence and in tone.

...For this reason atheism is not rationalism at all, and no atheist can describe himself as a rationalist unless he ignores the meaning of rationalism, of atheism, or of both. The truth is that atheism is not a form of disbelief, but of belief. It is commonly supposed that an atheist is a man who does not believe in the existence of God. This is wrong, for he is not so negative. Heis a man who believes in the existence of not*‑God. Hence his positiveness,his happiness, and that buoyant faith of a militant unchristian

Diocle

What a ing idiotic exhortation! I never teased people with faith, never!

Well, it's not an idiotic exhortation, Richard Dawkins encourages atheists to mock and ridicule Christians

----

Well, I don't remember our country signing up toget a slice of middle east in the last 300+ years

? obviously, not your country...
You said, "Also see all the terrorist strikes..."
I say/said the western intervention in Iraq/middle east as well as the Muslim fanatics share responsibility for these trends in radicalization.
---
It's offtopic, but I can't help but notice you're avoiding my question, post 79.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

...may I ask - what your (very white and very patriotic) heart has to say? do you agree? are you satisfied now? or do you disapprove or lament the "transfusions of blood and culture"...? was it good? was it bad?

[Diocle]

Well, why would the fear of the death change an absolute and irrefutable truth? a cube has 6 faces, and God does not exist.

If you read carefully what I wrote, then you'll find that my fear is not about death, but it's about dying and, believe me, it makes a huge difference.
Pain and fear, and fear of more incoming pain, can corrupt even the most strong belief, nothing can corrupt human mind than pain and fear, possibly this is the reason why suicidal terrorists accept death, but they always plan for themselves quick death.

I'm a rationalist,more than an agnostic;

Beware rationalism, it may generate horrid nightmares, in my opinion rationalism without materialism is like a car without steering wheel, you can't predict where the damn machine will bring you.
You might find yourself in God's arms, without even having realized how it happened. It's the Descartes' sad story, he thought he was erecting a cathedral to celebrate rationalism and in the end he just built a new metaphisics, at whose center, like a spider in the web, there was nobody else than God.


Side note: the day in which I find myself following the suggestions coming from the briton Richard Dawkins', I'll buy a gun and I'll shoot myself in the face! Anyway .. no fear, that day will never come!

[Gaidin]

Hmm,no, not at all.

I like how you cut off 90% of my post and don't respond to the rest. Good fallacy bro. Good fallacy.

[basics]

Ludicus,

If what makes a man religious comes down to genes then it strikes me that this couldn't possibly have happened by accident just to one or two people for as your scientist says it is possible that all mankind is infused with the same gene or similar, my take on that. Indeed it would clear up why there is such an argument surrounding the Supernatural, for or against. I don't know whether Steve Jones is correct in his assessment but there certainly is a hunger for God among the peoples who were denied the privilege of even being able to read about Him in places like China, Iran and others, where at the moment these consist mainly of underground cells.

[Humble Warrior]

What is it that makes man religious even to the point of killing others who don't agree with him?

You`ve basically lumped all religious people into killers. It`s a very unfair question and one that can`t be answered because of its two-pronged bias nature.

[Himster]

We might all be a little more spiritual than we think.

Possibly, but that doesn't make it a desirable condition. Spirituality is retarded, but sometimes it's retarded in a funny way, so it may be regarded as a tolerable foible. We should strive to be less spiritual, more individualistic, less collectivist/drone-like, more skeptical, less gullible; just as we strive to commit fewer murders and rapes.

Perhaps tolerated is too strong a word. It is important to mock ridiculous ideas, it is fun and gives essential vitality to this social organism into which we have been spawned. It has obvious evolutionary benefits hence the bio-chemical response of it being fun, like sex, well almost like sex. I'm not saying that mocking a funny little man riding a magic flying horse is the same as sex. Anyway, I was talking about tolerance or something: We should tolerate people, people can still be cool even though they have dumb ideas. Like I have an uncle who believes in faeries, full on lunatic level, like he got "stuck" in a fairy ring once, it's just a ring of fecking flowers and he wouldn't leave for a whole night and a day because he couldn't remember where he entered (and you have to leave the same way you entered), my cousins had to wait for him to fall asleep and then drag him to home. Obviously everyone laughs at his utterly ridiculous beliefs, like all spiritual beliefs they are inherently hilarious. But he can drink like a mother er and tells awesome stories and he'll always buy you a pint.

All of his awesomeness doesn't make his beliefs any less retarded and his retarded beliefs don't make him any less awesome.

Well, why would the fear of the death change an absolute and irrefutable truth? a cube has 6 faces, and God does not exist.

Don't worry, you are still blessed with the atheist faith.I'm between the margins of the river, and I go where the river goes,without thinking too much about it.

And yet, thinking about it, I'm a rationalist,more than an agnostic; in fact, there is a subtle difference, rationalism cannot say of the unknown that it is so far known as to be unknowable;agnosticism directly implies the affirmation that the unknown is unknowable.I don't know if the unknown is unknowable.

Aaaaaaaaahhhh. I get it now.
No wonder nobody can understand a word you're saying in this thread, you're using totally different definitions for these words than literally everyone else.
If you insist on using some obscure and esoteric definitions for agnostic/theist/atheist then you'll have to explain your own personal meaning each and every single time you find it necessary to use those words, over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over. It's a lot of superfluous effort. Is it just to be cool?
Do you know what else is cool: the Klingon word for loneliness: Garr'dock.

Well, it's not an idiotic exhortation, Richard Dawkins encourages atheists to mock and ridicule Christians

That sorry excuse for an article deliberately misquoted him. He stated, as he has often stated before, that we should mock silly ideas. Which is something everyone does all of the time, whether they're too arrogant (and too self-righteous) to admit it or not.
If one can't disassociate ideas from the people who hold them: I don't know how one could possibly hold a serious discussion on literally any contentious topic. Even a semi-serious or non-serious conversation would be impossible if one cannot disassociate ideas from the people who hold them now that I think about it.

[basics]

You`ve basically lumped all religious people into killers. It`s a very unfair question and one that can`t be answered because of its two-pronged bias nature.

Humble Warrior,

Don't the facts speak for themselves when one looks at religion as a whole. The Christianity that I follow however is not a religion, rather a faith based on the assumption that we don't need to kill as our God will deasl with our enemies in His way for us.

[fkizz]

Humble Warrior,

Don't the facts speak for themselves when one looks at religion as a whole. The Christianity that I follow however is not a religion, rather a faith based on the assumption that we don't need to kill as our God will deasl with our enemies in His way for us.

Provided a big enough group of people do what's demanded, or we end up like Hebrews in book of Isaiah.

[Ludicus]

Pain and fear, and fear of more incoming pain, can corrupt even the most strong belief,

Right
It's a belief.That's were we agree.The faith in God and the faith in non-God.

Gaidin

...and don't respond to the rest.

Sorry,could you summarize the key points?

-----

basics

...If what makes a man religious comes down to genes

genes? I haven't said that. The faith comes from your heart/mind.The faith transfigures the reason, and even the ethics.
(Kierkegaard again, my favourite Christian philosopher). I wrote previously "my leap of faith failed miserably". Diocle also wrote, and well, "I've not received the gift of faith." (although there is a subtle nuance here)

basics

there certainly is a hunger for God among the peoples who were denied the privilege of even being able to read about Him in places like China, Iran and others, where at the moment these consist mainly of underground cells.

I can't, I don't want to argue against your faith.
(Thinking about it, go see the new Scorsese's movie, Silence, an historically accurate movie about Portuguese Jesuit missionaries in the 17th century)

Himster

no wonder nobody can understand a word you're saying in this thread..Do you know what else is cool: the Klingon word for loneliness: Garr'dock.

How do you know? sometimes making generalizations is a sign of ignorance.

Himster

. Itis important to mock ridiculous ideas,..All of his awesomeness doesn't make his beliefs any less retarded

Well, that's what I call pseudo-intellectual arrogance.There are brilliant Christian or/and religious minds. Go read Aquinas, Kant,Kierkegaard, Levinas, Platinga, or Wittgenstein (a reluctant unbeliever) - the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. Wittgenstein speaks directly to you:

What must the man be called, who cannot understand the concept 'God', cannot see how a reasonable man may use this word seriously?Are we to say he suffers from some blindness?

And,

Religious faith and superstition are quite different. One of them results from fear and is a sort of false science.The other is a trusting

Himster

.. an article deliberately misquoted him

False.Listen to him,

"Mock them, Ridicule them".
He says we should mock and ridicule believers.
--------
I'm more prone to ridicule the atheists churches,
What happens at an atheist church? - BBC News - BBC.com
(see the video)
Hilarious.

[basics]

Ludicus,

Peter and the others tell us that faith, that is faith to believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins, rose again and now sits at God the Father's right hand to imput His faith into anyone who believes that He did what I've just written. Now if people have feelings and call it faith that's another matter because it is also written that there is false faith, a false Jesus and a false Spirit. So, the faith that comes from God is directly imputed into the heart of anyone who accepts what is written of Jesus Christ. It means not only a change of heart but a change of nature as well backed up by the Holy Spirit Who now dwells in them as a surety that their conversion is real. It's probably why God refers to the heart more often than anything else.

In what is called other faiths the structure is not to believe on its own, rather to do things hoping to appease whomever or whatever they worship which in Dawkins case is militant atheism.

[Gaidin]

Gaidin

Sorry,could you summarize the key points?

Why should I? They're right there in the post for you to read in two sentences. If you need it summarized down into one you're just being purposely lazy. Though Himster made a brilliant point of you using purposely wrong definitions of words just to be obtuse so take that as you will.

[Ludicus]

Why should I? They're right there in the post for you to read in two sentences.

What post, exactly?

Gaidin

Himster made a brilliant point of you using .. wrong definitions

It's not particularly brilliant. I have already answered, sometimes making generalizations is a sign of ignorance.
On a side note, atheism is not necessarily rationalist,as someone put it-I prefer rationalism to atheism.
And agnosticism is not a belief system as atheism; atheism is a belief system.Also, an agnostic is someone who is persuaded that there are limits to our knowledge.Read Pessoa's Essay on the Nature and Meaning of Rationalism.

[basics]

Provided a big enough group of people do what's demanded, or we end up like Hebrews in book of Isaiah.

fkizz,

Although there is a certain truth in what you say, Jesus foretold of these things when telling of the parables of the wheat and tares or the sheep and the goats, that there will be interlopers even in Christianity, a message that all the writers of the New Testament warned of. So, as my original question asks why man becomes religious these are some examples.

[fkizz]

? obviously, not your country...

If Portugal is not my country then why do I have to follow Portuguese Laws, Costumes and Traditions, pay taxes to Portuguese government, uphold Portuguese language, literature, Portuguese genetics, and have to be aproved by portuguese bureocracy and laws, all of this simply to just to pass by daily life?

Add to that Portugal has a huge population base that is, well, Religious and makes regular trips to Fatima and for them praying is almost as normal as drinking a cup of water.

In your place I would diversify more the type of books one reads. Denial of reality just because it causes friction with ideology is not healthy at all. Sometimes people get themselves lost in their Ideology world and lose touch with the harsh reality one.

But thanks for confirming suspicions you really do see the birth of Portugal as something "dirty". Simply because it contained a rare period of religious fervour.

You said, "Also see all the terrorist strikes..."
I say/said the western intervention in Iraq/middle east as well as the Muslim fanatics share responsibility for these trends in radicalization.
---
It's offtopic, but I can't help but notice you're avoiding my question, post 79.

Erhm the "White" term comes from Anglo Saxons term to differentiate themselves from the New World Natives and the Irish, rather the color of the skin in itself. (Technically speaking in coloration terms, the Irish are the amongst the whitest in Europe, but were considered much bellow "White" for centuries)
If I'm Portuguese, why would I want to identify as an Anglo Saxon or as an Englishman? Asides from the habit of drinking tea.

No offense, but your posts show a sort of cluelessness and lots of confusion on what is cultural identity that comes from having national identity, speaking language of the country and having ID card.

Sort that out first, otherwise it's a waste of time to continue.

Alright, I hope I didn't evade the question now, if I did before sorry, but the criteria on what you wanted or not was too confusing!

[basics]

What a ing idiotic exhortation! I never teased people with faith, never!
I respect too much the pain of living and dying on this world, for disrespecting people searching for a word of hope about the darkness beyond the end.

Sadly this hope is not for me, because, as he said in Italy a great jouranlist about his Atehism, "I've not received the gift of faith."
For me there is no hope about anything beyond my last breath, I won't see any light awaiting for me, I won't meet my father and my mom and my beloved ones, they are ash, they live just as dear memories in my neuronal synapses, I won't survive my death, I won't see the future generations struggling on this valley of sorrow for the centuries to come, I'll end when my heart stops his run, if I will be conscious, then fear will be pretty great, but all in all, more than death I fear dying, so, if the fate will be so merciful with me to give me a quick death, or at least to let me choose the right way to leave, then the jump into the nothing will be less cruel, I suppose.

That said, I just hope to have the strenght to stay loyal, till the last instant, to what I know being the truth: God does not exist.

Diocle,

I had another look at your post 82 and it dismays me to think that there isn't anything to come after death and you thinking that. You know Jesus wasn't the only one seen after His death as Moses and Elijah were also seen as was Abraham on another occasion as was Samuel in the time of Saul and David. Our vision of death can be quite an appaling thing and the word of God tells us that it is the most feared thing in all humanity so your not alone with these thoughts. One could say that my question on why man becomes religious can also ask why many refuse to become religious and for that very reason, the fear of death.

[fkizz]

In what is called other faiths the structure is not to believe on its own, rather to do things hoping to appease whomever or whatever they worship which in Dawkins case is militant atheism.

Militant atheism is flattery. He's in it for the fame of saying controversial things. Basically attention seeking. Add to that for some misterious reason he is much more tame in criticizing Islam compared to Christianity.

His life work in Science didn't give him enough attention, so he tried to become a celebrity of sorts, and is an attention seeking person. Cases like Paris Hilton show that doing controversial things to Media on purpose, assuming you have some previous background can turn you into a celebrity overnight.

[basics]

fkizz,

" Thinking themselves wise, they become foolish." Dawkins is the perfect example. It's such a pity that people like that get into positions of such power to indoctrinate those still learning.