Is Religion a Scam?

[Hastrman]

I was talking about the NAZIS.

I have never claimed that the communists were not anti-Christian.

But the “evidence” you offered was nothing of the kind, since Communists—who you admit were anti-Christian atheists—had the same policies toward churches. And the Nazis emphatically were atheist and anti-Christian; the Holocaust had Catholic clergy slated for death before any groups except Jews and Gypsies.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Angry

*I don’t deny that religion makes some people feel good.
But the same is true of cocaine.

Does that make cocaine a positive good? *

Whew!

The question more to the point is not whether religion makes some people** feel **good, but whether it actually makes them good. I’m not aware that cocaine actually makes anyone good!

Are you?

 

[AngryAtheist8]

But the “evidence” you offered was nothing of the kind, since Communists—who you admit were anti-Christian atheists—had the same policies toward churches. And the Nazis emphatically were atheist and anti-Christian; the Holocaust had Catholic clergy slated for death before any groups except Jews and Gypsies.

Do you have ANY proof of this extraordinary claim?

 

[Hastrman]

Do you have ANY proof of this extraordinary claim?

How bout this decree from Martin Bormann, head of the Nazi Part Chancellery and Hitler’s secretary, to the regional party leaders, in 1941:

More and more the people must be separated from the churches and their organs the pastors . . . Just as the deleterious influences of astrologers, seers and other fakers are eliminated and suppressed by the State, so must the possibility of church influence also be totally removed . . . Not until this has happened, does the state leadership have influence on the individual citizens. Not until then are the people and Reich secure in their existence for all time.

Also, the just-under 3000 priests at Dachau were singled out by the SS guards for particularly brutal treatment. Pretty much all the clergy of Poland were killed by the Nazis, actually.

 

[nguirado]

The concordant wasn’t a pledge of support from the Vatican for Nazism. It was to protect the rights of the Church against what the Church rightly perceived to be a HOSTILE government. The Church has signed concordants with Napoleon, Republican Spain, and other anti-Catholic groups.

When the Nazis reneged on their promises to leave the Church alone and started persecuting the Church, the Church responded with it’s famous 1937 encyclical. Please read that and tell me how the Vatican supported Hitler.

Please stop repeating this lie.

 

[MindOverMatter2]

I don’t deny that religion makes some people feel good.
But the same is true of cocaine.

Does that make cocaine a positive good?

That would depend on your definition of good, and whether or not it has any objective meaning beyond mere subjective pleasure. Taking cocaine doesn’t solve the existential question that I am faced with in the absence of God. This is more than just a question of pleasure.

 

[Tonitz]

@JDaniel: If you accept that Catholicism is the one true religion, than by definition ALL others are deceptive and misleading. Then that might as well be said by extension of non-Roman rites within the Church.

Some examples of dubious understanding of religion:

“’'Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.” ~Robert Bentley, Gov. (R) of Alabamma (I thought we all start out from the beginning as God’s children and work from that premise.)

“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith … we need believing people.”
~ Adolf Hitler

Sarah Palin and Christian fundamentalism in general. 'Nuff said.

I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work.
~ Adolf Hitler

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
~Saint Augustine

The state has not the right to leave every man free to profess and embrace whatever religion he may desire.
~ Pope Pius IX

That last one ought to go over well here in the States.

 

[nguirado]

That’s not the only choice available. I’m sure many others are sincere in their belief and are not being deceptive. That doesn’t mean that people can’t be sincere and wrong. One of us (religions) can be right or all of us, wrong. We can’t all be right. Atheists can be wrong or right.

@JDaniel: If you accept that Catholicism is the one true religion, than by definition ALL others are deceptive and misleading. Then that might as well be said by extension of non-Roman rites within the Church.

Some examples of dubious understanding of religion:

“’'Now I will have to say that, if we don’t have the same daddy, we’re not brothers and sisters. So anybody here today who has not accepted Jesus Christ as their savior, I’m telling you, you’re not my brother and you’re not my sister, and I want to be your brother.” ~Robert Bentley, Gov. (R) of Alabamma (I thought we all start out from the beginning as God’s children and work from that premise.)

“Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently, all character training and religion must be derived from faith … we need believing people.”
~ Adolf Hitler

Sarah Palin and Christian fundamentalism in general. 'Nuff said.

I am convinced that I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews, I am doing the Lord’s work.
~ Adolf Hitler

The good Christian should beware of mathematicians and all those who make empty prophecies. The danger already exists that mathematicians have made a covenant with the devil to darken the spirit and confine man in the bonds of Hell.
~Saint Augustine

The state has not the right to leave every man free to profess and embrace whatever religion he may desire.
~ Pope Pius IX

That last one ought to go over well here in the States.

 

[Tonitz]

I think more than whether or not religion is a scam, which is a loaded statement or implies that religion is the tool of the devil, (an interesting idea worthy of exploration) the underlying question here might be more about how useful religion is, if all those people listed can be right and wrong regardless of faith or lack of it.

We could agree with Susan B Anthony: “I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.” These following follow a similar theme:

“Man is the religious animal. He is the only religious animal. He is the only animal that has the True Religion, several of them. He is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat, if his theology isn’t straight. He has made a graveyard of the globe in trying his honest best to smooth his brother’s path to happiness and heaven.”
~ Mark Twain

“If you pray for rain long enough, it eventually does fall. If you pray for floodwaters to abate, they eventually do. The same happens in the absence of prayers.”
~ Steve Allen

So what, really, is the difference? I can practice my faith, but ultimately it is my faith, not my knowledge in the same sense that I KNOW that gravity works, and I share that certain knowledge with every human on the planet. Why is ti that something so fundamentally necessary, if you believe in it, as salvation, is guided by so fractious a guide as the uncountable shades of men’s beliefs all sanctified and glorified by invoking the same Divine, though those beliefs are as many as there are men. And yet there is but one force of gravity. Is that force greater than God, as is does in fact unite all men in a single verifiable experience, or is there something untransmittable in religious terms that is actually fundamental to gravity and all else?

I think that former is the case. And thinking that, I find it a solvent that renders any dogmatic structure ineffectual as a final mode of understanding, though it may be fuel for change. Certainly there is enough friction between all of the factions that each claim the ultimate truth as theirs that a fire of actual inquiry might be started in the coldest heart that is ademantized in belief. but there is, nevertheless, an incalculable depth to the fear that hold one in the grips of the dogmas of a belief system without testing those.

 

[4Horsemen]

The claim is vague enough that it doesn’t support a generic Christian God, let alone the Catholic God. It just implies that SOME kind of unknown force created the universe.

Moving on to the next step: Wouldn’t the “unknown force” have to be an intelligent one in order to create the universe? Then, what does this intelligent force want of me?

The classic error of scientific materialism is the mistake of thinking that just because the material cause of a thing is understood, it can be explained in its entirety.

As for the claims you made without any evidence to back them up (in the post in question) here are some examples:

-Belief in a Creator is actually the default position. Young children ask who made me and who made the world. The biological answer only partly satisfies. Belief in the Grand Designer is woven into our own design.

To prove the claim a study would have to be done which is really difficult, if not impossible to do with children since very young children confuse the real and the imaginative. Yet, my thought was that they are open to belief that Someone made everything, the whole world because it makes sense. Even children can understand that much as they acquire the age of reason.

Do you have any evidence that disbelief in a Creator is the default position?

It is modern atheism that is “the last superstition”, the last holdout of an irrational illusion clung to by those who will not let their minds lead them to what is right in front of them.

Atheism is dead. It doesn’t give answers to the big questions ontological and epistomological. Do you have any evidence that atheism is alive and kicking? Remember, only about 2% of the population considers themselves atheists.

-Anti-belief requires a choice, although the atheist may not even be aware of his/her thinking.

Every action we make requires some kind of choice. How can I back that up? Can you back up that it doesn’t require a choice?

We will be judged on the choices we make.

Re another post: Hitler wasn’t internally Catholic. He practiced the occult.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

4Horsemen

*Atheism is dead. It doesn’t give answers to the big questions ontological and epistomological. Do you have any evidence that atheism is alive and kicking? Remember, only about 2% of the population considers themselves atheists. *

The only question atheism gives an answer to is: “Does God exist?” Beyond that, atheism is useless because it raises more questions than it answers. The most monumental of these questions that atheism raises, but cannot answer, is: “Without God, why does anything exist?” It is certainly not an answer to merely say: “Everything just is.” After all, according to our scientific savants, a mere few billion years ago everything just wasn’t.

 

[Tonitz]

“…a few billion years ago everything just wasn’t” is a scientific “answer/question” that is as inadequate as “God did it” in the sense that most Christians understand that allegation. In other words, neither science nor religion are adequate to the question. The only advantage that science has in the matter is that it doesn’t stop asking more detailed questions, whereas the average religious individual feels no compulsion to go beyond assigning blame and justifying by faith the inconsistencies of belief of whatever stripe. Generally, where science says, “OK, then what if…” religion says “here is the answer; just believe.” And they only vaguely overlap in addressing the same body of phenomenon. Science is inquiry, whereas religion is answer from a foregone premise.

That is why it is necessary to go beyond either of these in addressing the question that is so casually relegated to a polar debate about is/isn’t there a God. But while religion can bring one to the doorstep of the methodology that could bring a satisfying answer to that debate, it’s own short sightedness embodied as dogma prevents most of its adherents form persuing the actual spirituality that is repeatably successful when perused, and would and has worked fo atheists as well, as it is not faith based.

Unfortunately, unless experienced, the inevitable answer makes the results look either like blasphemy or atheism to believers and like hooey or mumbo-jumbo to atheists. In fact, it is neither, and like God, those who have seen the light, while they would be happy to share their understanding, care not a whit either way despite an embracing compassion for the struggle of others.

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Tonitz

*But while religion can bring one to the doorstep of the methodology that could bring a satisfying answer to that debate, it’s own short sightedness embodied as dogma prevents most of its adherents form persuing the actual spirituality that is repeatably successful when perused, and would and has worked fo atheists as well, as it is not faith based. *

Your prose style (Professor Irwin Corey?) is somewhat incoherent. If you would read this into a tape recorder and ask a friend to listen to it, I doubt he could sum up in his own words what you have said.

Try again?

Science is inquiry, whereas religion is answer from a foregone premise.

The following sentence is just as true:

Religion is inquiry, and science is answer from a foregone premise.

 

[jlover]

I have posted this thread to the Apologetics and waiting for an answer. After reading this, please evaluate yourself if religion is a scam or not:

"Greetings in the Presence of Our Lord Jesus the Messiah!

This is about the Miracle Host in the Miracles performed in Naju, Korea and The Vatican. You see, this Holy Host is made by God and not by Man out of the Miraculous Blood that flowed down from the image of Our Lord Jesus in The Crucifixion.

The Catholic Officials in there were able to capture a picture of the design of The Miraculous Holy Host.

How come The Vatican didn’t officially adopt the design of this Holy Host in every host on all Catholic Church but instead, focus on praising the “Queen of Heaven”???

I believe you know that the bread with a cross design is the bread of the last supper version of the sun god!

Isn’t it clearly a Message from God that we have to change the design of the unleavened bread in favor for The Most High God and throw away the hosts with a cross because it is a pagan worship? Why is The Vatican too dumb to clearly understand The Message while you have bunch of Theologists that can interpret this message clearly???

Even The Message of The Blessed Virgin Mary clearly states that God is so disappointed with our worship to Him yet The Vatican is doing NOTHING."

 

[StevenFrancis]

Last night on The Factor a noted atheist argued that religion is a scam, and many Christians know it in their hearts. They just haven’t got the courage to admit it. He invited Christians to join the atheist cause since atheism is a fact, whereas religion is governed by people who specialize in hawking wishful thinking.

Your thoughts?

I am coming to realize that once the Holy Spirit has actually brought you to Christ, that atheism simply doesn’t make any sense anymore. In my case, long before I ever realized that I would become a fully believing Catholic Christian, I was still a theist. Even when I was a Buddhist I was was a theist. I have ALWAYS not only believed that there was a God. To me it has always been self evident. I had all kinds of journeys into many faith traditions, and many new age ideas of what and who God may be, but I simply can’t imagine or remember a time when I could even fathom that there is just absolutely no God at all. It doesn’t even hold up in my philisophical reasoning process. Atheism doesn’t make any sense. I just read a book called “The Godless Delusion”, and while it was a great book from the standpoint of apologetics, and I highly recommend it to anybody who is sincerely interested in theism vs. atheism, for me, it wasn’t the apologetics I was after. I was really trying to get an insight into why or even how there are atheists. Some of them quite extraordinarily intelligent to boot. What are they failing to grasp as human souls, and creations of God? This book couldn’t really answer that question completely, but it did finally give me a little insight. It let me see some of the faulty logic, and bad philosophy that could lead someone in that direction. I guess I’m simply not wired for atheism. Neitzche and his nihilsm is astoundingly off the mark. And he was brilliant. I think the problem is screwy axioms. If the axioms are wrong, you can end up in the wrong place, no matter how smart you may be. Axioms are everything. I’ve always started with existence exists, and it began. It is eternal on the forward end, but there is no infinte regression, because when stuff began, so did time. Before stuff and time, was God. What on earth else can it possibly be? Atheists can look each other, and us in the eye, with a straight face, and say that somethingness invented itself? There was nothing and then there was something for no particular reason whatsoever? That extreme unlikelyhood of human life, reasoning, etc. does not indicate a soul? There are no valid metaphysics?

Anyway, as to these statements, they’re just typical atheist mumbo jumbo. You could reverse the nouns, and a theist could make the same statement. Heck, let’s go ahead and try it:

a noted theist argued that atheism is a scam, and many atheists know it in their hearts. They just haven’t got the courage to admit it. He invited atheists to join the Christian cause since Christianity is a fact, whereas atheism is governed by people who specialize in hawking wishful thinking*.

• (faith in impossible odds and chance, and an escape from moral and ethical responsibility). my own little addition.

Jesus Christ is the truth. He is also the light, the life, and the way.

Blessings,

Steven

 

[Charlemagne_II]

One gets tired of hearing about the failings of certain powerful churchmen down through history. Yes, there were bad popes in the old ages, and today there is no want of evidence that there are bad priests. Is all that scandal supposed to prove that religion is an evil scam? Are the thousands of abortionists throughout the world supposed to prove that medicine is an evil scam? Are the thousands of scientists throughout the world developing nuclear weapons for our destruction supposed to prove that science is an evil scam?

It seems unseemly that, in a world so under the thumb of “rationalist” atheism, atheists should be so deeply irrational as to keep throwing up the Inquisition when they have run out of the usual weapons in their arsenal.

 

[StevenFrancis]

and like God, those who have seen the light, while they would be happy to share their understanding, care not a whit either way despite an embracing compassion for the struggle of others.

This is a sad statement. I hope that those who are struggling with their journeys don’t honestly feel this put off by either God or his followers, and I pray that those of us who have experienced the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit are cheerfully willing to share the paths that led us each to the place and time of our experience. Not that any two of us have the same journey, or that there is a magic formula. I didn’t finally get it until I was well into my 40’s. But there are some things that are known to make God’s presence more easily known for any honestly struggling traveller. Prayer, honest reading, and prayer for understanding of scripture, and not discounting and ridculing everything someone who is already Christian has to say. Our experiences are valid. Just as valid as anything going on in intellectual academia, or in the laboratory. If you’ve ever approached a Christian believer to gain an appreciation or understanding, and were treated as if they didn’t “care a whit”, then shame on them. Most I know and deal with, even before my own conversion, were always compassionate and honest. I’m sorry you’re having such a different experience, and I really DO care. How my I help?

Yours in Christ,

Steven

 

[Tonitz]

Thank you, Stephen. Clearly you are a compassionate man of some experience.I’m sorry if I misled by words into thinking that your interpretation referred to an experience I might have had as a person associating with someone I queried regarding understanding. My experience has been quite the opposite of that.

The only clarification I might point to here is that by “care not a whit either way” followed by the bit about compassion, was meant to signify that such a person as has had insight past a certain degree or kind feels nothing is at stake from the point of view that all is embraced by Love. They are simply present and available for those who are seeking understanding without adding the flavoring of having themselves something to gain ore loose by their imparting anything. It is, if I may, the kind of indifference that loves and and also completely and freely credits anyone their free will whatever their choice. It is the forbearance that times things to the best advantage of the questioner at the expense of the personal will of the “giver.”

I hope that helps.

 

[tonyrey]

After all there are great advantages in rejecting religion! You then have a carte blanche: you are absolute master of yourself with no obligations to God or anyone else. Total independence is a consummation devoutly to be wished… (With apologies to Shakespeare - a Catholic and cousin of St Robert Southwell who was hung, drawn and quartered for his faith in 1595).

Not when there is the prospect of justice being meted out after death! Many atheists express satisfaction that they are **liberated **from the burden of “superstition”. That in itself is a motive for rejecting religion…

 

[Charlemagne_II]

*Not when there is the prospect of justice being meted out after death! Many atheists express satisfaction that they are liberated from the burden of “superstition”. That in itself is a motive for rejecting religion… *

Not to mention the burdens of sin, guilt, penance, and Church on Sunday morning.

I think many atheists choose atheism not because it is true, but because it is easy.

Little do they know … “my burden is light.”