Quote:For example, "The Catholic Church" and their dogma have been proven wrong many, many times over the centuries and given time they adapt to the changes revealed by science.... each time shrinking their strident (and violently enforced) claims to be in possession of the literal truth down to a fuzzier, more vague notion of being in communion with their deity. Outdated superstition turns into poor philosophy.
Quote:... from your perspective. I'm more of a philosopher than scientist, so I value more than empirical knowledge.I have no issue with philosophy. I have issues with bad philosophy derived by sifting through the ruins of old dogmas and fanciful superstitions.
Quote:You mean like Stalin and his purges? You mean like the Khmer Rouge?I think Russell's answer is most appropriate. Communism is atheist in the sense that it does not believe in external gods, but in every other sense, it is as much a religious as a political doctrine. Communism is as far removed from *freethinking* atheism as it is from Catholicism or Hinduism, maybe further. It involves the abstract worship of a dogma, expressed by heroic messiah-figures, memorized and chanted in great crowds and force-fed to schoolchildren, and enforced with violent purges of people who do not subscribe to the dogma? It might be atheist, but it seems more like an overgrown cult. Specifically, it rejects the philosophy that leads me to my atheism, skeptical empiricism, and replaces it with a kind of faith which is no less limiting than religious faith.
Quote:Yes, homogeneity. Immigration is upsetting their utopia.So, it's not really religion that glues society together, it's tribalism?
Quote:There are some articles I've read that equate these violent offshoots of Islam akin to destructive cults, just like Aum Shinrikyo. In this regard, OBL is just a crazy cult leader.No argument there.
Quote:Well, sort of, he was paraphrasing Marx. I found the actual Marx quote, "Religion is a crutch for those who are too weak to face life alone."The game begins anew: got a source for that? I can't find it except on a couple of Christian anti-Marx pages, and some of them don't even cite it to him. (Besides, it makes no sense; Karl Marx was not an individualist. He didn't believe in "facing life alone", he believed in class consciousness.)
-Jester