"Religion was created to control people."

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Guest1 said:
Religion was created to control people.
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Well, that can be said for any religion and any ideology. But it doesn’t follow from this statement that all religions are false. The possibility is one thing, but it actually being true is another thing entirely.

I know that religion can be used as a front for evil and even to protect evil in a roundabout way. But that requires deception. In the end, if all i am being asked to do is to “love”, that’s hardly reason for me to think i am being controlled by a false religion.
 
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IWantGod said:
But in the end if all i am being asked to do is to “love”, that’s hardly reason for me to think i am being controlled by a false religion.
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If only it were that simple. Hold it…wait a minute…come to think of it, maybe it is that simple. I do recall hearing somewhere about loving thy neighbor or some such thing. So what’s all this other nonsense for?
 
Guest1 said:
How do you like to respond when someone says something like that? 🙂
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Religion occurs organically in any society, down to tribe of a few dozen people.

It’s a baseless accusation created by Marxists.
 
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Vladtheinhaler said:
Like all this Catholic nonsense.
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Let me rephrase this for you, “i don’t like the catholic religion and i don’t see the need for it”

The fact that you don’t see the need for it might be a sign of enlightenment…but then again maybe you are just blind. If you honestly want to find out, maybe you should begin by not assuming that the Catholic faith is nonsense, and i say assume because you haven’t provided any substantial reason why you think that it is. I think you will find that people on this forum don’t respond well to empty judgements.
 
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Your question was, “Explain. If “provable” why don’t all believe it?”

My response was, “Denial of reality, and replacement with fantasy, is an astoundingly popular pastime. Thus the virtual reality world - “gaming” - and so on. The search for Truth does drive some, thanks be to God.”

My response explains why “the provable” - which points to reality, to that which it true, to that which IS - is in fact denied in our culture. We are in the midst of a culture of denial, of escape, of finding a “safe space” inside our own minds. Such escape is futile, but widespread. There is no life in falsity.

Does that “connect the dots” for you? I wasn’t trying to be obscure.
 
Vladtheinhaler said:
Like all this Catholic nonsense. Can’t we just stick to Matt. 22:39, or perhaps MIcah 6:8? They seem to pretty much cover all of the important stuff.

But noooooo…we’ve gotta have all of that other nonsense.
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Here’s the problem that makes your position untenable: without “all of that other nonsense,” there would have been no one who preserved either the Gospel of Matthew or the Book of the Prophet Micah for century after century so you could cherry-pick two verses from the entire Bible as the only important thing.

(Just as an aside: Vlad the Inhaler? You’re inhaling what, exactly, that makes inhalation an identifying feature?)

As an example: why do you think, if the Prophet Micah only had one important thing to say, that it took 6 chapters for him to get around to saying it? Is that really all he had to say, and the rest is “nonsense” rather than commentary? You would tell him that?
 
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“So was the law”

Sadly, such people are looking at this from a purely worldly viewpoint. Many of them cannot grasp the transcendent - in this case the God of Israel. Lacking that capacity, the civil law is perhaps the only concept that might be immediately understandable.

Yet, our Catholic faith allows us to receive the grace so that we might control ourselves - but out of love rather than fear of temporal retribution or societal condemnation.

EDIT: Clarity
 
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Vladtheinhaler said:
If only it were that simple. Hold it…wait a minute…come to think of it, maybe it is that simple. I do recall hearing somewhere about loving thy neighbor or some such thing. So what’s all this other nonsense for?
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Again: If that were the only thing that is important and nothing else needs to be said, Jesus of Nazareth had to be an utter lunatic to go to Jerusalem where he knew the authorities were going to kill him, wouldn’t you say? Why would a rational person do that, if you are correct? If he was not rational, then why quote the stuff that his foolishly religious followers preserved from his sayings two thousand years later?
 
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Guest1 said:
How do you like to respond
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I wouldn’t say it was necessarily created to control people, but it has certainly been used extensively to that end. All religions can likely point to elements of abuse within their structures. I heard one theologian say that “religion is in the control business”, which tells me that no matter how well meaning any organization begins, humans will find a way to make it self serving.
 
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fide said:
My response was, “Denial of reality, and replacement with fantasy, is an astoundingly popular pastime. Thus the virtual reality world - “gaming” - and so on. The search for Truth does drive some, thanks be to God.”
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You and I need to have a chat at some point about this. Currently I’d rather not derail the thread so lets take it elsewhere.
 
IWantGod said:
In the end, if all i am being asked to do is to “ love ”, that’s hardly reason for me to think i am being controlled by a false religion.
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That is hardly all any religion typically asks if it’s followers, though.
 
Divine3 said:
Fourth - if he is referring to the Catholic religion controlling people, especially here in the USA and Europe, I would say it’s doing a lousy job of controlling people. Might put his worries to rest. 😂
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Well, I think he’s obviously wrong, or at least partially. Certainly religion is one means by which we set up basic expectations for behavior, but at least as far as Christianity is concerned, it really was created more as a means of salvation. Certainly it was a guide to Christians’ conduct.

But some will certainly use it to attempt social control. Think the “Five Non-negotiables”, which American conservative Catholics attempt to use as a means of shaming or badgering Catholics into not voting for Democrats.
 
Only a reasonable, and a non follower of a party or crowd would have the wisdom to leave a political party that no longer supported what it once stood for. A political party that has allowed its roots to rot and be filled with maggots isn’t worth staying with. As a former liberal Democrat, I don’t follow the crowd anymore or what mommy or daddy or my grandfather did either. For me once a Democrat always a Democrat does not hold any chain on me. So for now, an Independent I shall be.
 
Control? Not the Dems I know…they care more for their party then for some very important laws of God. Like thou shall not kill. When they leave their Dem. party, then they are finally free and not being controlled by their political party. Or if they finally go back to the dignity of the human person from conception to natural death and to respecting and honoring the family… Man, woman and children equals a family…just in case some folks have forgotten what a family is - -I gave an example. Then anyone could join the Democrat party again, but for now I want my freedom and no Democratic party is going to control me. Not even if they all get in office. My freedom is in God not in a political party.
 
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QwertyGirl said:
That is hardly all any religion typically asks if it’s followers, though.
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Whether that is technically true or not, it’s not a reason for me to think my religion is either false or an attempt to control people. That’s the point. The mere possibility of something is not good enough. You have to justify assertions, not simply give the illusion that your opponent has to defend something. Otherwise you are basically saying that religion is false because it is a religion. That’s a prejudice, not a substantial basis for a debate.

It’s like me saying that governments were created to control people. What is one suppose to say to something like that. If one means that it functions through an evil deception to undermine the dignity of human beings for it’s own self preservation, then we have to justify that belief. We can create conspiracy, but we at least have to give a reason for why think it is true, otherwise the statement itself is a deception.

Without evidence, all one is really saying is that one doesn’t like religion and that it is convenient to perceive it as a system of control. How convenient would it be that something which made us feel guilty turned out to be the enemy of moral truth.
 
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MasterHaster said:
Explain. If “provable” why don’t all believe it?
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It is provable historically, because those who saw Jesus rise from the dead not only wrote down - consistently - what they saw, they were willing to die for it. It’s one thing to die for something you “think” is true but didn’t eyewitness it yourself like with Islam. It’s another thing to be willing to die for something you have witnessed with your own eyes, the exact same thing other previous skeptics also saw with theirs. There are also over 300 prophecies about the coming Messiah in the OT, over 100 fulfilled just in Jesus’ First Coming, which is statistically impossible, but He did it. And unlike other religious books, the Bible contains no errors or contradictions. No other worldview can claim all of this. Despite this overwhelming evidence, there will be those who still won’t believe - not because there isn’t overwhelming evidence of it being true - but because this is a spiritual battle and they are blinded spiritually to the truth. Many of these same doubters who choose to disbelieve have believed more about other things based on considerably less evidence.
 
I don’t respond to that, because they have already made fairly clear their concept of morality, and I prefer to not argue with someone who is fueled by emotion.
 
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