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While that's true, I've increasingly found that this happens with things people consider the opposite of religion--specifically, atheism.

I learned something today that has me apalled--I knew that atheists have killed, harassed, and done horrible things in the name of destroying religion and promoting atheism, but this just took the cake. Ever heard of Pol Pot? He was the Communist party leader for Cambodia back in the 70's, which was called the Khmer Rogue.

The group was also Marxist-Leninist, which meant that they promoted atheism (to put it very lightly). Up to 1976, the constitution of Cambodia provided for religious freedom with the exception of "reactionary religions that are detrimental to the country are forbidden."

The majority of Cambodia is Buddhist, like 85%. Minority groups of Christians and Muslims were also in the country at the time, and the Khmer Rogue tolerated them because they needed the popular support.

Once one of the major cities, Phonm Penh, fell to their control however, things went to heck in a handbasket. In a word, they treated anyone religious as vermin. And the details are grisly.

For starters, they rounded up all ~60,000 Buddhist monks, defrocked them, and forced them into labor camps. Many of these monks were also executed. Buddhist temples and holy places were destroyed or converted to jails and warehouses. Buddhist religious sculptures, artworks, and such were also destroyed.

And the Christian and Muslim minorities got it even worse. The Khmer Rogue destroyed all Christian and Islamic places of worship, including the Roman Catholic cathedral in Phnom Penh. ALL clergymen of Christian or Islamic persuasion were killed--and they really, really treated the Muslims bad. Regular Muslim people--they would round them up, and force them to eat pork, which is forbidden and considered a grave sin to Muslims. If they refused they were shot immediately.

And to top it all off, anyone caught so much as praying or expressing religious beliefs were executed on the spot.

So if I see anyone (like, say, Richard Dawkins) calling for religion to be outlawed because they consider it "lethally dangerous nonsense," I can laugh bitterly at their hypocrisy--not when atheists have done things like this for no other reason than someone believing in God.

In the end, religion is just like anything else in the world, like technology--it by itself can be a wonderful thing, but there are people who will twist it to serve immoral means.

To make a belated quip at Jello B, who said something to the effect of "many people would not have been taken prematurely if religion didn't exist"--progress to replace religion with 'the airplane' or 'rocketry.' Many people have died in airplanes or have been killed by warplanes in war, but the airplane itself has improved the life of many on this Earth. The same goes with rocketry--indirectly through the space race medical technologies were developed, such as pacemakers, and none of this would be possible if rocketry wasn't invented. And yet at the same time we have ICBMs, and guided missiles--weapons of war that have killed many.

Is it truly a sound idea to say "because something has been used to kill people, no matter what good it has done for the world, it should be removed entirely from our lives?" Think how many people have been inspired by their religion to do good works for their fellow man. Think of people like Ghandi, who was very religious--and quite possibly the single most powerful icon of non-violent action alone. Don't just think of the psychotic extremists who blow themselves up to be martyrs.

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Have you ever heard of the Crusades, Trev-MUN?

And I never said we should get rid of religion, although I do agree with that last paragraph. Just because somebody kicked me with shoes on doesn't mean we sue Nike.

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Of COURSE he's heard of the Crusades.

He's not saying that religion has never caused horrible bloodshed and the like.

All he's saying is that non-religion has caused its share of problems, too, but you never hear anyone bagging on atheism.

Why, yes I have! It's the favored instance in history every anti-religion or anti-Christian activist uses to beat religious people with. "RELIGION IS BAD! THE CRUSADES, MAN! THE CRUSADES!!!#1^*!&#^*&!1"

In case you missed it, I wasn't trying to perform some sort of holocaust denial--I was trying to balance the equation by pointing out that not only have there been people who have been inspired by religion to do good, but atheists have been just as fanatical and murderous and have done horrible things in the name of purging religion.

You can't use religion as a scape goat no more than most other human concepts.

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You have. Got. To be kidding.

Next to satanism. Although people are in sense "baggin" the "christian satanist" which i think sums it up well. One who "worships and praises" the evil deity from christianity in order to induce shock and rebel against society blah blah blah. Im sure you've heard it before.

But there are "other" santanists. If you can call them other. Id say only. But eh. Anyway. Next to satanism, I ALLWAYS hear people "bagging" on athiesm/athiests. Then again. One who is an athiest, or is a satanist, would hear much more of this then one who is on the other side of the rock throwing line, so to speak.

-cheers

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"What Darwin was to polite to say, Is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have allways been the craziest, most murderous ************'s in the jungle"

I'm gonna say it is mankind's greatest strength. It gives us something to believe in.

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There's religion that shapes your morals and religion that emerges from one's morals. I don't know what religion I belong to at this point in my life, because I want my morals to shape my religion and what I believe and not the other way around. I think it's the first--when religion hand feeds you things to believe in--that can be dangerous. Doesn't always have to be dangerous, just can be.

As for discrimination against particular religions, I think part of it comes from where you are. Some of my friends are rather hardline athiests (I go to a magnet school, where I'm in the science program) and bag on Christians at times. But I've read plenty of material of fundamentalists and evangelists bagging on athiests and liberals. And I'm sure going internationally you're going to find totally different prejudices.

If you're raised in a particular religion on a harder line, you're going to absorb more beliefs, and possibly more dangerous beliefs the same way you may learn hate for a particular race if you come from a racist household. But that doesn't always happen. Sometimes the religion people teach to their children is kind and nice. As long as you think about your beliefs, see what they do to the world, and question them a little, I think you'll do fine.

I made the decision ages ago that if I was to have children (something doubtful in itself as I have no patience whatsoever) I'd help them to explore their own morals and beliefs and teach them about varying world religions and guide them in their moral choices rather than completely overtaking them in it.

I could say more, but I think I've said enough for now. Not totally on topic and not so much based on sociology as it is just general personal observation, but whatever.

Religion, just as much as government or business, is an avenue that can lead to power and control. As someone else said, it is human nature to use these paths and gain power. Religion is just one.

Hmmmmmmmm......

While I, personally, am against the idea of Religion and therefore more likely to say that it is a weakness, it does provide many with a sense of knowledge, however true or *false* it may be, about their origins and where the universe came from.

BUT

Religion leads to arguing, arguing leads to fighting, which lead to wars and, in some extreme cases, acts of terrorism. People use it as an excuse to do whatever they want. Some of those people are downright insane.
I read in a newspaper a while back that some woman bashed her kids' heads in with rocks because "God told her to."

Once again, I do not believe in any form of Religion, but I strongly doubt that God (hypothetically existing) would have someone do something like that.

Isn't Religion supposed to prevent this kind of stuff from happening? Instead, it divides people and makes them fight with each other about whose Religion is better.

To conclude, I believe that there should either be ONE Religion that everyone can agree on, following moral codes of all other Religions, and including all the Gods from those Religions in the religious theory about the creation of the universe and human kind.

OR put a stop to Religion entirely.

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Look out, here comes Trev-MUN.

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Is it really fair or logical to totally get rid of religion because of the people who take it too far, who bring it back to its roots and take things word for word?

No matter your religion, there will be hardships to battle through. There will always be whackjobs, the crazies, the insane, the corrupt. Outlawing religion is not going to do that. Government themselves can become a kind of religion in that case. And as I said, religion is just one avenue to power, chaos, dominion, whatever. Think of the huge mega-corporations that exist today, celebrity, governmental irresponsibility... sure, these things may all be mildly different, but in the wrong hands anything can be usesd for evil.

Religion is not always supposed to prevent things like that, but it does help--I know people whose moral codes are rigidly defined by their religions (like a lot of the Korean population at my school... not to be racist). But they're not always bad people. They can be nice and wonderful and whatnot, and sometimes religion helps that. Religion offers solace, community, comfort, hope, and explains what goes on in the world.

And to have one religion would be a mistake. Diversity is a huge strength of humankind. First off, many religions do share a basic moral code: be kind, don't steal and kill, that kind of thing. Religion makes a huge impact on culture, too. In America you don't see it so much but think of India. India may not be the greatest example with its castes that could be downright suffocating but the concept of being born into such a caste is a decidedly Hindu concept.

I'm very irreligious myself, but I don't understand how you can think about things like that. It's just as bad as those who try to evangelize everyone, not out of kindness or concern to their mental state, but as in their religion is the one true religion--and otherwise, you're going to hell.

I agree a lot with fruiterian. I can't fathom the world cooperating with a sense of individual freedom if we had only one religion or no religion at all. No matter how much science gives us, people will always need something to believe in. Science can tell us the hows and whats, but it never tells us the grand WHYs, such as why are we here, and is there anything special we're meant to do. A lot of sociology and psychology can still help out there, but it still doesn't give us everything. Sure, sociology can provide morals about how to interact, but why? Why are we social creatures in the first place?

I am an Individual Spiritualist, meaning I have strong spiritual beliefs but do not follow any one organized religion. Why do I have these beliefs? Because of things I have experienced (things which many of you may think I am crazy for believing) which I cannot explain in any other way. Now, I have seen plenty of people of various religions have some sort of spiritual experience and use that to affirm that their religion is the "one true" religion. But if so many different religions can offer people these similar experiences, can that really be the grounds to say which religion is "correct"? My belief is that religions offer people a route for which they can learn to connect some way or another to the spiritual realm, thereby having said experiences (whether you call it Enlightenment, Nirvana, the Grace of God, or what have you).

People need to be free to believe whatever they desire, and to express those beliefs so long as it doesn't cause harm to anyone. Otherwise, they'd be missing out on one of the greatest aspects of life, IMO. Life should be about experience (the ups and the downs and all that), and what sort of experience could come from limiting someone to one or no religion at all?

Yes, religion divides, as it has done for so many millenia...but even some good can come from that, as it can lead to people looking upon their own selves for better understanding of themselves...which leads to personal growth. It is an entirely humbling thought to realize that because people's morals are so diverse across the globe that there is at least one person who believes that YOU are evil. If that doesn't make you step back and analyze yourself, I don't know what can.

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The meaning of life is 'bucket.'

FOR PONY!!!

I don't really want to give my opinion here. My heart wants to say greatest strength because I am very religious, but there are so many facts staring me in the face.

One of such is like when I was just posting about the Mohammed controversy. There, pretty much everyone is the same religion, and all are angered if their religion is offended, and everyone shares the same views. Mind you that just drawing a picture of Mohammed is like burning a picture of Jesus. But here, not everyone has the same views, and some don't even have a religion. That breaks up the power of American protestation.

Just because I'm hard to deal with like this, I'm drawing a picture of Mohammed
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/(()))\
/ ' ' \
| _\ |
| { } | <- Mohammed
\ @ /
| /
| |

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No, I lied. I'm never going to have a good sig. So just forget about it.

Actually, believe it or not, not everyone in the middle east shares the belief that strapping dynamite to your chest and walking into a crowded market is following God's will.

A majority of Muslims are as offended at that, if not more, than most of us Christians are at people like Fred Phelps.

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If you can't fix it with a hammer, you have an electrical problem.

It is a huge majority of muslims, and I didn't say anything about dynamite or terrorism or anything.

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No, I lied. I'm never going to have a good sig. So just forget about it.

I won't deny that those facts are facts, but if it's making you question things, you should at least look at the other side first.

...

Come to think of it, that post I made on "Drifting from the Church" was better suited here. Though, I'm not going to repaste it--though I do think you ought to look at it, some of the points and facts I brought up to the good Professor count here and to what you said.

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